Passive Progressive
by wealhtheow21
Summary: Sequel (of sorts) to Concerning Hobbit(s). Bilbo decides it's about time Kili got out and about a bit more. Things don't quite go according to plan.
1. Chapter 1

You've all heard this story before, but let me tell it anyway: this was meant to be a one-shot to go into the Subordinate Clauses series, but then it ended up getting too long (groan) and now it will be at least three parts. Don't worry, I haven't abandoned Third Person Singular! Hope you enjoy.

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><p>x<p>

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><p>It was a fine morning in October when Bilbo Baggins decided to put his latest scheme into action. He had found, since returning from his adventure, that he was all over schemes and plans where before he had been quite content to plan nothing more momentous than the menu for the day. It was odd, perhaps. And then again, these days he found himself at least partly responsible for the continued advance of another person's progress, and perhaps that made an eye to the future inevitable. In any case, it was surprising how much he enjoyed his little ideas, considering them one by one and how they might be made to be successful. And now, when Fili and Kili had been his guests for almost two months, and Fili had become cheerful and bright of eye and Kili at least a little less anxious and prone to dark moods, Bilbo decided it was time to take another step forward.<p>

Fili had gone out running very early, and, given the poor weather, he had not insisted his brother go with him. But after an hour or so, the clouds broke up and lifted away, leaving the sky looking washed clean, and although Bilbo would normally have waited for Fili's return before putting his plan into action, Kili seemed so unusually free of tension that morning that Bilbo thought he should not delay, for with autumn closing in, another such happy coincidence of weather and mood might not strike for many days.

"Now," he said to Kili, who had been helping him clear up after second breakfast, "would you like to go for a walk?"

"Yes," Kili replied immediately, which was no surprise, of course, for although Bilbo and Fili had tried again and again to impress upon him that he should only agree to things he truly wanted to do, yet Bilbo could not remember a time he had ever said no to such a question.

"Splendid!" Bilbo said. "It is marvellous weather for a walk. Mind you take your coat, though, for I think it is rather chilly outside." And he gestured at the door with a smile.

Kili stared at him as if waiting for something. Bilbo, having anticipated this reaction, nodded at the door again.

"I do not feel like walking today," he said. "Hobbits are rather lazy creatures, you know."

This brought a look of great confusion over Kili's face, which was quickly replaced by a worried expression. "I not understand," he said at last.

"You should go for a walk, since you have said you want to," Bilbo said. "It is a shame to waste such weather. But I will stay here."

Well, now Kili's look of worry only increased, and he glanced from Bilbo to the door and back again.

"I not understand," he said again. "I should go walk? Alone?"

"Yes," Bilbo said. "But only if you want to. But you did say you wanted to, did you not?"

And this was quite unfair, for of course Bilbo knew full well that Kili did not want to go for a walk on his own. But it had begun to weigh heavily on Bilbo's mind in the last days that Kili still did nothing of his own invention. Indeed, he barely even moved about the hobbit hole without being told where to go and what to do. Bilbo's scheme was very clever, for he had made sure to have Kili agree to the walk before he knew what it entailed, and now if he did not go it would almost seem like going against Bilbo's wishes. But it would not be, and of that Bilbo had made quite sure: he was determined that Kili should go and do something by himself, and equally determined that he should not be forced or ordered to do so. Admittedly, his scheme still had some element of conniving in it, but Bilbo had been thinking about it for some days. and had come to the conclusion that it was the only way that would at least leave some semblance of free will to Kili.

"Off you go, then," he said, ruthlessly squashing down his feelings of guilt as Kili began to look mildly distressed. "Make sure you're back by lunch." And he went to the front door and opened it. "Come along."

Kili stared and stared, but at last he took a few steps forward and took his coat from the peg by the door. He clutched it in one hand and turned to Bilbo.

"You want I go alone?" he asked.

"_You_ want to go for a walk," Bilbo insisted, ignoring a renewed pang of guilt at the rather lost look on the little dwarf's face. "And very sensible an idea of yours it was, too. Walking alone is very enjoyable, my lad, I assure you."

Kili, with great reluctance, took three steps out of the door, and then looked back at Bilbo. "Where I should go?" he asked.

"Oh, as to that," Bilbo said, "wherever you like!" And he smiled and pointed down the path, and at last, when Kili only stood and stared at him forlornly, he gritted his teeth and gave a cheery wave.

"Well, enjoy yourself!" he said, and closed the door.

He leaned against it, fighting the urge to open it again and tell Kili that of course he did not need to go for a walk if he did not want to. Indeed, he was not only contravening the rules of politeness - for it was certainly not the done thing to shoo a guest out of your house and close the door in his face - but also those of his soft heart, which desired nothing more than to have his friends comfortable and happy and never made to do anything unpleasant.

"Well, it will be for the best in the long run," he told himself as he leaned there against the door, wondering if Kili was still standing on the other side. "It has to happen eventually, and it might as well be today. And he is a very sensible dwarf and will certainly not get into any trouble in the Shire."

And he decided that he would spend the next hour cleaning some of the rooms deep in the hobbit hole, and stay well away from the door and the windows. But somehow, when he was on his way to collect a broom, he found himself hiding by the kitchen window, peering out through the lacy curtains. Kili, he saw, had moved several steps further away from the door, and had even passed through the little gate. But now he stood on the path and turned his head left and right, and seemed at a loss for what to do next.

"It is for him to decide," Bilbo said to himself. "He must learn to decide for himself, and that's all there is to it!"

And he hurried away and forced himself not to look back.

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><p>Fili returned perhaps half an hour later. Bilbo, who was up to his elbows in cobwebs in one of the root cellars, heard the door slam shut, and then Fili's voice calling his name, and he jumped to his feet and hurried up the passageway to the upper rooms, for he certainly did not wish Fili to discover his brother's absence and fly into a panic. But in fact, he need not have worried, for when he arrived at the front door he found Fili standing in the hall with a look of confusion and some degree of anger on his face, and Kili beside him, hair over his face and elbow held tightly in his brother's hand.<p>

"I found him wandering around on his own outside," Fili said, without so much as a _hello_. "I cannot get a word of sense out of him. He said he had to stay outside until lunch, but he does not seem to be able to tell me why."

"Ah," Bilbo said, suddenly realising that there were aspects of his scheme that perhaps he had not fully thought through. "Yes, well, that is not quite right. He wanted to go for a walk, and I did not want to go, so I told him to go on his own."

Fili stared at him in incredulous silence, and Bilbo began to rather kick himself for not sharing his ideas with the young dwarf when he first began to invent them.

"You let him go on his own?" Fili said finally, sounding as if he could not decide whether to be furious or simply astounded.

"And why not?" Bilbo asked, deciding not to mention that it was less that he had _let_ Kili go and more that he had _made_ him go. "He is a grown dwarf, if he wishes to go for a walk on his own, why should he not?"

"Because he is Kili!" Fili cried. "He cannot walk around on his own! Anything might happen to him!"

Kili shifted ever so slightly beside his brother, and Bilbo decided that this conversation was most certainly doing more harm than good.

"Why don't we let your brother sit down," he said, trying to sound conciliatory, "and then you and I can have a talk." He stared at Fili meaningfully, and then indicated Kili with a quick jerk of his head and a raise of his eyebrows.

Fili scowled at him, but of course he had no desire to cause his brother any further distress, and so he towed him through to the living room and deposited him in his chair.

"Don't move," he said to him, and Bilbo's heart sank, for it was quite the opposite of his hopes to have Kili being ordered around by his brother. Fili turned and stalked past Bilbo out into the hall, and as Bilbo hurried along behind, he saw to his astonishment that Fili was locking the front door and slipping the key into his pocket.

"Well, I never," Bilbo muttered to himself, but he followed Fili into one of the rooms that was furthest away from the living room. By this time, it was clear that Fili was working himself into a towering rage, but Bilbo was feeling rather wrathful himself, and was not at all in the mood to be scolded, so that when Fili rounded on him he drew himself up and faced him squarely.

"How-" Fili started, but Bilbo was not about to let him get the first words in.

"Now, look here, master dwarf," he said, "your brother was perfectly all right outside on his own, and what you have just done has made it so that he will be even less inclined to be his own dwarf from now on, I shouldn't wonder. And locking the door! You should be ashamed of yourself!"

Fili stared at him in astonishment. "_I_ should be ashamed?" he said. "Kili cannot go wandering by himself - he is not well and he cannot look after himself, as you know perfectly well! You were supposed to be looking after him, and instead you let him wander off? What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that he is not at all unwell, and that he is perfectly capable of looking after himself, if only we would let him," Bilbo said. "I was thinking that perhaps one day it would be nice to see him come and go as he pleases, just as you do. But I see you would rather keep him prisoner!"

A look of fury came over Fili's face at this. "Watch your tongue, master hobbit," he growled, but Bilbo did not fall back.

"Well, and what else would you call it, when you lock the door and take the key so that he cannot get out?" he cried. "Perhaps you would prefer to chain him up next time you go out, just in case?"

It was a terrible thing to say, and Bilbo knew it as soon as the words left his mouth. Yet he could not call them back, but could only stutter as Fili's eyes widened and flashed with rage. "Oh, I am sorry, I am sorry," he said. "I did not mean to - but you must understand, my dear Fili, he can never truly get better if he does not learn to do things for himself."

"Things, aye!" Fili cried. "He cooks, does he not? And he comes running with me, and plays with Esme."

"Yes, when we tell him to," Bilbo replied. "He comes running when you ask him to come, and he plays when Esme demands it, and he cooks when I suggest it. But he does not do anything _himself_, master dwarf, and he never has, as long as I have known him. Surely he had a mind of his own before the orcs? He did not simply do everything you told him to then, I am quite sure."

"He-" Fili started, and then stopped, suddenly looking stricken. He passed a hand over his face and closed his eyes a moment, and when he opened them, the anger had ebbed away, replaced by sorrow. "Yes," he said, in a much quieter voice. "He had a mind of his own. Too much so, most of the time."

Bilbo sighed and reached tentatively forward to pat his friend's arm. "And he will again," he said. "But not if we don't push him. We have tried and tried to convince him to make his own decisions, have we not? But he never does unless forced into it. I thought - I thought if he was on his own, if he couldn't look to us to choose for him, he would have to do it for himself, even if it is only choosing whether to turn left or right at the fork in the path."

Fili frowned. "Then - it was you who made him go out alone?" he said. "He did not simply take it into his head to wander off?"

Bilbo almost laughed at this, for the idea of Kili taking it into his head to do anything was quite ridiculous, and yet exactly what Bilbo wished him to do. "Yes, I told him to, in a way," he said. "Indeed, I almost had to push him out of the door with my own hands." He braced himself for more anger, but to his surprise, Fili only looked relieved.

"Then if we do not push him, he will not do it again?" he asked.

"I should think not," Bilbo replied, and Fili nodded.

"Good," he said, and now Bilbo understood the look of relief, and yet rather wished there had been more anger instead, for it seemed to him that Fili had not been listening at all to what he had been saying.

"It is not good at all," he said. "Unless you mean to tell me that you are content with your brother remaining forever dependent on us to tell him what to do at every moment, and never learning to follow his own heart and mind, or yet even to recognise that he has them?"

Fili stared at him, and for just a moment, Bilbo though that he would reply that he was indeed content with that. But at last, he shook his head.

"He is not ready," he said. "You saw how upset he was."

"He will be upset if he has to learn this today, or next week, or in ten years," Bilbo said. "It will always be painful and difficult. But surely it is better to do it sooner rather than later? And certainly better to do it here, in the Shire, where no harm can come to him."

Fili's jaw tightened. "He is not ready," he insisted, although he sounded less sure of himself than he had before. Bilbo sighed and patted his arm.

"Are you sure it is Kili who is not ready?" he asked.

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><p>Kili became sullen and withdrawn after his aborted walk, and although Bilbo did his best to improve matters with the liberal application of cake and cheerful chatter, still there came no break in the weather, until at last, on the following day Bilbo sat down by him and patted his knee.<p>

"Are you angry with me, my lad?" he asked.

Kili frowned and shook his head. "Why angry?" he said.

"Because I made you go outside on your own," Bilbo replied. "I do think you will enjoy it, if you only practice until you get used to it."

"I not angry," Kili said, and then glanced at the door to the hallway. "Fili angry," he said, rather quietly. And it was certainly true, nor had Fili made the least attempt to hide it, but had spent the last little while scowling and closing doors more forcefully than was strictly necessary.

"But he is not angry with you," Bilbo said quickly, and he was about to embark on his (now rather well-practised) explanation of this when Kili shook his head again.

"No," he said. "He is angry with you." And he looked, for a moment, so utterly miserable that Bilbo sat back in his chair in astonishment.

"Well - yes, he is not entirely happy with me," he admitted. "But that should not make you so unhappy. Neither of us are angry with you, after all."

"You wanted I go walk," Kili said. "Fili not wanted this." He stared at Bilbo with a troubled frown, and Bilbo began to understand - at least a little - what it was that was causing him such distress.

"And you do not know which of us to agree with, is that right?" he asked. Kili did not answer, but he looked away, and Bilbo felt sure he had the right of it. "Ah, Kili," he said, "you do not have to agree with either of us, if you do not want. Have I not told you time and again that it is what you want that is important?"

Kili whispered something that Bilbo could not hear, and Bilbo leaned closer and tapped his knee.

"Speak up," he said. "What was that?"

"I not want go walk alone," Kili whispered, and Bilbo suddenly realised that he had talked himself into a trap.

"Hm, well," he said, "that is different, you see. There are some things you must do, whether you wish to or not, because it is good for you. Like washing vegetables before you eat them."

He was rather pleased with himself for this analogy, and decided to ignore the part of his mind that pointed out that he was doing just what he had determined he would not do when he had invented his scheme. But the scheme had long gone awry, and if he was to salvage it at all, well, perhaps he would have to alter it a little.

Kili frowned. "I not understand why wash vegetables," he said.

Bilbo sighed and settled himself more comfortably in his chair. At least, he reflected, Kili seemed to be a little less anxious about Fili's mood now. Perhaps distracting him was a better way forward than trying to explain, at least for the time being - for he had no illusions that Fili would allow him to send Kili out alone again in the next little while.

"Well," he said, "as I have told you before, it is because dirt tastes most unappealing, and can make you ill, besides-"

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><p>In the end, it took almost a week - and a great deal of sulking - before Fili came to Bilbo one quiet morning and said, "Perhaps you were right."<p>

Bilbo, in the middle of pouring himself a cup of tea, looked up in surprise. "About what?" he asked. But a moment later he understood, and he straightened and set down the teapot. "Oh," he said, "then you agree that we must take steps to help your brother learn?"

Fili cast a troubled glance towards the living room. "I do not like the thought of him going out alone," he said. "I do not - I do not like the thought of him alone at all." But now he turned back to Bilbo, and although there was an unhappy cast to his face, still, there was determination there, too. "But if it is the only way - if it is the only way to free him from the chains those foul creatures put upon his mind - then better it should be here, where there can be little danger to him."

Bilbo breathed out a great breath, and felt rather light, although he had not been aware that anything was weighing upon him. "I am glad," he said. "And I hope you are not still angry with me."

"I hope you are not angry with me," Fili responded.

Bilbo chuckled at this. "Well, if I flew into a rage every time a dwarf played the fool, I should have little time to do anything else!" he said. "Come, then. When shall we start?"

And start they did, though not until the next day, for it seemed Fili still needed a little time to accustom himself to the idea. So it was that, the following morning, after breakfast, Bilbo nodded at Fili and then rose to his feet, going to Kili's chair and putting a hand on his shoulder.

"Now, my lad," he said, "do you remember what I told you about going for a walk by yourself? About how it is something difficult that nonetheless must be done?"

Kili looked up at him, and then shot Fili a worried glance. Fili, too, rose from his chair and stood, rather stiffly it was true, but managing to betray little of the anxiety he no doubt felt. "I agree with the hobbit, my brother," he murmured. "You should go for a walk for a little while." And if he placed too much emphasis on the word _little_, well, perhaps Kili did not notice.

Kili made no move to stand up, despite this reassurance from his brother. He seemed, if anything, even more unsure of himself than he had the first time Bilbo had told him he should go out, and Bilbo was considering various avenues of persuasion when Fili simply took two steps across the room and took his brother by the arm, gently pulling him out of the chair and pushing him towards the front door. Kili stumbled a little, then righted himself, and although Bilbo made silent inward protest at this action of Fili's, which of course made it all too obvious that Kili's own desires were irrelevant to the situation, yet Kili himself seemed a great deal more comfortable with being pushed than he had with being asked, and took his coat from the peg without further protest.

"Good," Fili said, opening the door. "But you will - you will be careful, won't you, my brother? You will not go near the river, or talk to anyone you do not know?"

Kili only stared at him, his eyes wide. Bilbo almost laughed at the idea of Kili voluntarily going anywhere near the river, but he did not, for both brothers seemed under a great deal of strain. At last, Kili spoke.

"Where I should go?" he whispered.

"It is just as I told you," Bilbo said firmly, stepping forward and laying a hand on Fili's arm. "Wherever you like." He pointed at Kili. "You should go where _you_ want to go."

Kili's mouth turned down at the corners, and Bilbo felt Fili's arm tense under his hand. He knew that if there was any more delay, Fili would most likely give in and tell Kili to come back inside - he knew this because he was on the verge of doing so himself, looking at the poor little dwarf's miserable expression - and so he took another step forward and gave Kili a tiny push.

Tiny it might have been, but it was enough to send the little dwarf across the threshold, and Bilbo, without thinking further about it, took the door from Fili's hand and shut it firmly. "There," he said, and turned to look at his friend. Fili looked almost as unhappy as Kili, and Bilbo sighed and took him by the arm. "Now, I think it's time for some tea," he said.

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><p>Tea, while certainly an improvement over no tea, was not quite the panacea Bilbo had been hoping for. Fili sat with his hands wrapped around his cup, his shoulders hunched and tense, and paid little attention to Bilbo's attempts at conversation, seemingly focussing all of his mind on listening for Kili's returning footsteps.<p>

"We should have told him when to come back," he said, apparently in answer to a remark Bilbo had made about the likelihood of frost in the coming days. "Who knows how long he will stay out?"

"I doubt very much he will be gone for long," Bilbo replied. "Was he on his way home when you found him last time?"

"No," Fili replied, "he was facing away from Bag End. But he can only have been gone a few moments last time, surely?"

"Oh, no," Bilbo said, "he was out for half an hour or more."

Fili frowned at this, and Bilbo sat up a little straighter. "What is that face for, master dwarf?" he asked.

"He was barely out of sight of the door," Fili said. "Only a few steps away. Surely it cannot have taken him half an hour to travel such a short distance?"

Bilbo sighed, thinking about how he had watched Kili standing beyond the gate, seemingly at a loss. "Well, perhaps he will manage a few more steps this time," he said.

At this moment, there came a loud knock at the door, and Bilbo - who was not expecting visitors - leapt to his feet and went to answer it. When he did so, he found on the other side the stout figure of Sigismond Took, brother to Adalgrim and uncle to little Esmeralda and all her brothers and sisters (and, of course, Bilbo's cousin, although they were not particularly close), and beside him - to Bilbo's surprise and annoyance - stood Kili, eyes fixed on the ground.

"Good morning, Cousin Bilbo," Sigismond said with a bow. "I've found a dwarf that I think belongs to you."

"So I see," Bilbo said, doing his best to sound polite. "But why have you brought him back here?"

"Oh, well, I found him wandering on the hillside," Sigismond said, "and I've heard as how he's-" Here he paused and glanced at Kili, then leaned forward and lowered his voice. "-a bit touched, so I guessed he must have wandered off when you weren't looking." He leaned back again, smiling jovially. "Maybe you should keep the gate locked." He frowned over at Kili, then at the gate. "Though he's tall enough he could probably just hop over it, if he'd a mind." Here he shook his head, as if at a loss to understand why any creature should need to grow so tall as a dwarf, and turned to Kili. "You shouldn't go stepping over gates, you know," he said, speaking at twice the volume and half the speed he had used to address Bilbo.

"Yes, well, much obliged, I'm sure," Bilbo said hastily, and he took hold of Kili's arm and steered him inside. "I would ask you in, of course, but-" he thought frantically, trying to invent an excuse, but Sigismond only waved a hand.

"Oh, I'm on my way over to see my brother, anyway," he said. "I only stopped by to make sure you got your dwarf back before anyone started to worry about him. I know how dear Begonia frets when Esme is late back from playing, after all."

"Hm," Bilbo said. "Yes, but Esme is six years old." This he said in a tone that was rather more short than was polite, but if Sigismond noticed this, he did not comment on it.

"Seven next week, if I'm not mistaken," he said cheerfully. "Good morning, then!" And he strode off down the path, whistling a jaunty tune.

Bilbo sighed and turned to Kili. "Did you have a nice walk?" he asked, feeling rather deflated.

Kili glanced quickly up at him, then back at the floor. "Hobbit talk very loud," he muttered.

"Some hobbits are rather stupid," Bilbo said, a little unfairly, it must be said. "Would you like to go out again?"

But Kili pulled such a terrible face at this, and the likelihood of the same thing happening again was so high, that Bilbo had not the heart to force him outside again. And so he took him through to the living room, and grumbled to himself all afternoon about well-meaning hobbits and their foolish interference, and ignored the fact that Fili seemed far less irritated than he was by Kili's swift return.

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><p>By the next day, however, Bilbo had devised a new plan. It was market day in Hobbiton, and Bilbo set off soon after elevenses with his basket on his arm. In fact, there was very little he needed to buy, and so he wandered aimlessly up and down the little rows of stalls until he spotted a hobbit who was ideal for his purposes.<p>

"My dear Jessamine!" he cried, hurrying up to her. "And how are you this fine morning?"

Jessamine Bolger looked very pleased to see him - as well she might, for Bilbo was not unaware that, what with his sudden disappearance and equally sudden return, not to mention his strange visitors, he was very much still the richest source of gossip in Hobbiton, if not all the Shire. "Most well, thank you, Bilbo," she said. "And how are you? And your dwarves?"

"Very well, very well indeed," Bilbo said, and then raised his voice a little. "In fact, Kili likes it here very much."

"Does he, indeed?" Jessamine said. "I suppose it is a great improvement on wherever it is that he comes from."

"Hm," Bilbo said, doing his best to sound polite. "Well, in any case, he has decided he wants to explore."

"Oh yes, I heard that Sigismond Took found him wandering alone yesterday," Jessamine said, laying a hand on his arm with an expression of sympathy. "It must be very difficult for you, Cousin Bilbo, to have to look after someone with his affliction. Is it true that he spent many years living with beasts in the wilderness? I wonder that he survived with any of his wits at all!"

Bilbo gritted his teeth. "As it happens, he is rather clever," he said. "But in any case, my dear Jessamine, I do think it would be good for him to see Hobbiton a little more. So that we can show him what a proper, civilised place looks like, you see."

"Oh, yes, what a marvellous idea!" Jessamine cried. "And then when he goes back to his dwarvish friends, he can explain to them what it is to live somewhere safe and comfortable, and maybe they will be able to improve their lives a little."

"Indeed," Bilbo coughed. "What an excellent idea of yours, to have him wander round on his own a little. You are always so inventive, my dear cousin."

Jessamine looked rather surprised by this, and then gave a pleased smile. "I do have good ideas, I must admit," she said, in a tone that was probably supposed to be confidential, but which nonetheless must have been audible from ten paces away. "Herugar is always saying so."

"I'm sure he is," Bilbo replied. "Well, I will be sure to follow your instructions! Only we must see to it that all the hobbits know, so that no-one tries to take him home before he is ready."

"Oh, indeed!" Jessamine said, nodding solemnly. "That would not do at all! And you know, my dear cousin, I am likely to visit a great many hobbits before the day is out, and I can explain it all to them, if you like. I know you are not a great one for invitations, yourself. And it would certainly be easier for me to explain it, since it was my idea, you know."

"It certainly would," Bilbo said. "I am so pleased we have had this little chat, my dear Jessamine. I confess I was quite at a loss before we spoke."

"You know I am always glad to help, Cousin Bilbo," Jessamine replied with a magnanimous smile. "Now, I must be off - I think I see Lily Bracegirdle over yonder." And she kissed Bilbo soundly and hurried away.

Bilbo watched her go and then smiled to himself. "Well, that should do it," he murmured, and then bought a bunch of carrots for appearance's sake, and made his way home.

* * *

><p>Having made these arrangements for the future success of his scheme, Bilbo made his third attempt the very next afternoon, since the weather, if no longer fine, was at least not actively unpleasant. He sent Kili off in much the same way he had on the previous two occasions - though this time the little dwarf did not ask where he should go, but only followed Bilbo with reluctant steps to the front door, and did not speak, though his expression was mournful indeed. When he had gone - or at least, when the door was closed - Bilbo sent Fili to chop wood in the cellar, and set himself to cleaning the kitchen, and resisted looking out of the window. And this time, half an hour passed, and then an hour, and no-one brought Kili back to the hobbit hole. Fili returned, bathed in sweat, having apparently split every log in the cellar, and sat silently at the kitchen table, and, once he could find nothing else to clean, Bilbo joined him, and tried to think of something to talk about, or some task that Fili could occupy himself with. Another hour passed, and when they were halfway through the third, Fili rose abruptly to his feet.<p>

"It's time for afternoon tea," he said. "I'm going to find Kili."

And, without any further explanation, he stumped off.

Now, Bilbo found this all rather unexpected - not least because Fili had never been the least troubled by Kili missing afternoon tea before, and had often kept him out all the way to dinnertime - and he scrambled to catch up with Fili before he should disappear entirely. He found him standing outside the garden gate, frowning down the path.

"We should have watched him," he said. "Which way did he go?"

"Calm yourself, master dwarf," Bilbo said, patting his arm. "I'm sure he is on his way home." Indeed, he was rather surprised that Kili had stayed out so long, but he told himself he was very pleased, and refused to admit the nagging little fears that crept through his belly as he stood and looked down the hillside and saw no sign of his friend. "After all, no harm can have come to him in the Shire," he added. "Why don't you go left and I shall go right?"

And so that was what they did. Bilbo made his way down the hill, trying his best not to hurry - for of course, there was no reason to be concerned - and, in the distance, he heard Fili calling Kili's name. When he was halfway to the river, he heard his own name being called by another voice, and turned to see who it was.

It was Asphodel Burrows, who was looking rather pleased with herself. "Good afternoon," she said. "We have had your dwarf visiting today. What an odd creature he is!"

Bilbo found himself quite astonished by this, for to his knowledge Kili had never once exchanged words with Asphodel or any of her family before, nor even knew of her existence. Why, then, should he have gone visiting with them? It was most peculiar!

"How lovely," he said (although in fact, he was not at all sure that such an experience would have been lovely for Kili). "Can I come and collect him? His brother wants him home for afternoon tea."

"Oh! He is not there any more," Asphodel said. "Lily Bracegirdle happened to be visiting as well, and she thought it would be quite marvellous for your Mr. Kili to go visiting at her house, seeing as how he wants to learn all about the Shire and she and hers know more about the Northfarthing than anyone else in Hobbiton." Here Asphodel made an expression that, if she had not been such a well-brought-up hobbit, might have been said to be a roll of the eyes. "She took him off more than an hour ago. And we found him at Buttercup Gamgee's house, so he is certainly getting a taste of hobbit hospitality!"

"How lovely," said Bilbo again, although this time rather weakly. "Well, thank you for your kindness, and I'm sure Kili is very grateful. But I'm afraid I must be on my way - afternoon tea, you know." And he nodded his thanks and hurried off in the direction of the Bracegirdles' hobbit hole, hoping that Kili would not be too overwhelmed when he arrived there.

But when he did arrive, Lily Bracegirdle met him at the door and insisted he come in for tea before telling him that Kili was already gone. "Oh, yes," she said. "Jessamine was visiting, and she seemed quite put out that Mr. Kili had come visiting with us before he came to her. _After all_, she said, _it was my idea in the first place!_ As if she invented tea and cake, don't you know. But your Mr. Kili is rather fond of cake, isn't he? So nice to see a hobbit enjoy his food so much!" She paused here and frowned. "Or a dwarf, rather. How odd, to have a dwarf in my hobbit hole! But I was very surprised, my dear Bilbo, he did not seem savage in the least, though his table manners leave something to be desired."

"I will tell him you said so," said Bilbo hastily, and managed to excuse himself before another round of tea appeared. It seemed he had been rather too clever in his scheme to convince the hobbits to play their parts in Kili's recovery - and now the poor little dwarf was with the Bolgers, of all people! Goodness only knew how he was surviving, after so many hours of visiting.

So concerned was Bilbo that he all but ran to the Bolgers' hobbit hole, and was quite out of breath when he knocked at the door. Jessamine beamed when she opened it and saw him on the other side.

"My dear Bilbo!" she cried. "Just the hobbit! I have been telling your Mr. Kili all about the Shire, just as we agreed yesterday. Come in, come in!" And she stepped aside, and let Bilbo through to the hall, and thence to the living room.

There, perched on the edge of a chair, clutching a tea-cup and looking exhausted and very uneasy, was Kili. He looked up when Bilbo entered, and the expression of relief that crossed his face when he saw him was quite remarkable.

"Hello, my lad," Bilbo said, crossing the room with three quick steps and putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. "I hear you've been rather busy."

"You'll stay for tea, of course?" Jessamine asked, bustling back into the room with a tray of biscuits and little cakes.

"Thank you, indeed," Bilbo said, "but I'm afraid we must be getting back. Kili's brother is expecting us, you know. He will worry if we don't return."

"Worry about what?" Jessamine asked, sounding rather surprised. "There can be nothing to worry about here in the Shire! Surely he will now that you have simply gone visiting. Why, every time I leave the house, I find myself gone for hours! Though perhaps it is not the same for you, cousin Bilbo, since you are not so - fond of invitations."

Bilbo managed to prevent himself from rolling his eyes, and took firm hold of Kili's arm, bringing him to his feet. "Ah, well, you must remember, they have not been raised in the Shire, and so they are not used to how very safe it is," he said. "It would not do at all for us to let him worry, even though of course there is nothing at all to worry about. Thank you so much for the invitation - I do receive so few, not nearly so many as you, I am sure! - and a good day to you, cousin."

And with this, he hurried from the room before Jessamine could suggest sending someone to fetch Fili so that he could enjoy her hospitality as well. Indeed, so single-minded was he in his pursuit of escape that they were halfway back to Bag End before he thought to loosen his grip on Kili's elbow.

"Now then, are you all right?" he asked, looking Kili over. The little dwarf was downcast and seemed slightly unsteady, and Bilbo wondered if he had been being passed from hobbit hole to hobbit hole for the entire time he had been gone (and decided he most probably had). Even after he let Kili go, Kili stood very close to him, and the sound of a child shouting in the distance caused him to start in a way that Bilbo did not like at all.

"Too many hobbits," Bilbo decided. "And too much tea, no doubt. I am sure Jessamine did not think to ask if you liked it or not."

Kili did not reply to this, and Bilbo sighed. "That was not exactly the sort of walk I had in mind," he said.

Kili did make some kind of response to this, but Bilbo could not hear it. "Speak up, my lad," he said, inclining his ear to Kili's mouth.

"Why I must go walk?" Kili said, only slightly louder than before.

"I have already told you why," Bilbo said. "Because it is important for you to make your own choices."

"I not made own choices," Kili said. "Hobbits made choices. It is better not go walk, you can make choices. Your choices are better."

"I cannot make all your choices for you," Bilbo said. "And neither can your brother, before you suggest it. It is just as I have told you: we don't know what it is that you want. No-one knows, except you, which is why you are the only one who can choose."

"Hobbits did know," Kili said. "Why hobbits know, you not know?"

"What hobbits?" Bilbo asked. "The hobbits you met today?" Kili nodded, and Bilbo found himself frowning in confusion. "They did not know," he said. "How could they have known what you want? They do not even know you!"

Kili began to look worried. "They said did know," he said. "J- Jez- Jez-" He stuttered to a stop, and Bilbo hastened to help him.

"Jessamine," he said. "Jessamine said she knew what you wanted?"

Kili nodded quickly. "She did know," he said. "She said this."

"What exactly did she say?" Bilbo asked, trying to imagine what might have led Kili to the conclusion that Jessamine Bolger, of all people, knew what was best for him.

Kili paused a moment, as if working to construct some thought in his mind. "She said _I am sure Mr. Kili_-" he stopped and frowned in concentration. "_I am sure Mr. Kili like come visit me_," he finished. "And then she say _I am sure you like some tea_." He nodded at Bilbo. "She say sure. I am not sure, but she is sure. She know."

"I see," Bilbo said, suppressing a sigh at the appearance of yet another linguistic trap. "Then let me ask you this: did you actually want to visit her and drink tea?"

This question left Kili looking quite confounded. He opened his mouth and closed it again, then frowned and dropped his gaze, apparently happy to look at anything except Bilbo himself. Bilbo waited a moment or two, but when it became clear that an answer to his question was not forthcoming, he patted Kili's arm and started walking up the hill. Kili followed him, and they walked in silence until they reached the gate to Bag End. Here, as Bilbo paused to open it, Kili finally made his reply.

"She said sure," he said. "Sure mean she know. It mean this, yes?"

"I'm afraid it is a little more complicated than that," Bilbo said. "But even if it were not, you must realise that just because someone says they know something does not mean they are right. Especially when they say they know something about how you feel." He pointed at Kili. "So, then, did you want the tea, or not?"

Kili stared at the ground. "No," he said, after a long pause. "I not want tea. I not - not like tea."

"Precisely," Bilbo said. "You do not like tea, and you did not want tea, and you know that but Jessamine does not. If you had been more used to making your own choices, then you would not have had to drink any tea at all. So, do you see why it is so important that you should learn?"

Kili began to look rather sullen. "It is not bad, drink tea," he said. "Not very bad. I can drink." He gave Bilbo a quick, hopeful glance. "I drink tea, I not must go on walk?" he asked.

"Oh dear," said Bilbo. "That is not the point at all!"

Kili's hopeful expression faded, and Bilbo took pity on him, for he still looked quite worn out after all of his visiting. "Well, we will talk about it tomorrow," he said. "Come on, then, let us find your brother before he tears his beard out with worry."

And so that was what they did.


	2. Chapter 2

Fili was most relieved to have his brother returned to him, and, after hearing what had happened and observing Kili's dark mood and increased anxiety in the aftermath, declared that, promising as Bilbo's scheme had initially appeared, it was clear that it would have to be abandoned. Kili brightened rather on hearing this - although he still remained rather nervous for the rest of the day, and had a most unpleasant nightmare that night - but Bilbo, though he held his peace, privately remained convinced that Kili must be made to take some decisions of his own as soon as possible. So he bent his thoughts to inventing some new method by which this could be achieved, and after a while grew certain that his original idea was still the most likely to succeed, provided some modifications were made to it. He explained these modifications to Fili, and, after some arguing, Fili reluctantly agreed that this new plan should at least be attempted. And so, two days after Kili's visit to the various living rooms of Hobbiton, Bilbo took him by the arm after breakfast and smiled at him.

"Time for a walk," he said.

This announcement - short though it was - led to a startling change in Kili's demeanour. One moment he was watching Bilbo with a look of curiosity, the next, his head was dropping, his shoulders hunching, and his mouth turning down. In short, he looked entirely miserable.

"Hmph," Bilbo said. "Well, I do not think it is as bad as all that! And your brother and I will go some of the way with you this time, so that you do not have to go visiting - unless you want to, of course."

This minor reprieve did not seem to have much effect on Kili's mood, but Bilbo was quite determined, and he tugged at Kili's arm until Kili stood and went to fetch his coat, looking rather like a forlorn little scarecrow. Fili gave him an uneasy glance, but Bilbo would not be moved.

"Come on, then," he said, in a cheerful voice that was perhaps a little too loud, and led the way out of the hobbit hole.

They turned left out of the gate, and made their way along the hillside quickly and quietly, avoiding the path down towards the village and the river. They saw a few hobbits in the distance, but met no-one on the path, and after perhaps a ten minutes of brisk walking, they came to the edge of a little woodland that was far enough away from Hobbiton, and far enough from the main paths through the Shire, that it was rarely frequented by any but hobbitlings and the occasional adventurous Took. Here, Bilbo stopped and turned to Kili.

"Now, then," he said, "now you can go for your walk in peace, and with no fear that you will have to go visiting. You do not have to stay out for very long, although you certainly may if you want to. But make sure you are back by lunchtime, or your brother will worry about you."

Kili glanced at Fili in some surprise, but Fili did not deny this. He put a quick arm around Kili's shoulders. "See," he said, "there is the path we always walk along. It is safe, and you know it well."

Bilbo found himself rather annoyed by this statement of Fili's, for he saw Kili's eyes go to the little track - barely more than an impression in the thick leaf-litter - and realised immediately that Kili would interpret Fili's words as orders, or at least instructions.

"Or you could go a different way, if you want," he said hastily, though he knew in his heart that Kili was unlikely to do so. But it could not be helped now, and so Bilbo waited until Kili had taken a few steps along the path, and then took hold of Fili's arm and pulled him firmly away, turning towards Bag End and carefully not looking back.

* * *

><p>Kili came back before even half an hour had passed. Indeed, his walk was so abbreviated that Bilbo was not yet even looking for his return, and did not realise he had come back until he looked up from his book to find him standing silently just inside the living room. This rather startled Bilbo, and he jumped and let out a quiet <em>oh!<em>

Kili shifted uneasily. "Walk is finish," he said. "I can come back?"

"Of course you can come back," Bilbo said, pressing a hand to his chest to calm his fluttering heart. "Come in properly and sit down. Did you enjoy your walk?"

Kili went over to his chair and sat, still looking rather nervous. "Yes," he said, but although there were many feelings that Bilbo might have read into this reply, enthusiasm was not one of them.

"I see," said Bilbo. "Where did you go?"

"I go Fili path," Kili said, after a moment's thought. "Into woods. Then out. Go there, come back."

"_Went_, not _go_," Bilbo said, rather absent-mindedly, for most of his thoughts were occupied with wondering if Kili going along the path his brother had directed him to was much of an improvement over Kili not going anywhere at all.

"Yes," Kili replied. "I went Fili path. Went Fili's path."

"My path?" Fili asked, stepping into the room and smiling warmly at his brother. "Hello, you are back."

Kili glanced up at him and nodded. "Short walk," he said.

"Good," Fili said, and sat down, putting a hand on Kili's shoulder. "We can go for a longer one later."

Kili seemed to cheer up a little at this, and not long afterwards Fili began teaching him some new words of _iglishmêk_. Bilbo watched them, and supposed he ought to be content that they were both doing so well, that they were alive and cheerful (for the most part) and becoming brothers again, more so every day. But still.

But still.

* * *

><p>After this, Bilbo sent Kili out every day that the weather permitted - accompanying him out of the village for the most part, for he had no desire to lose him once more to the lively visiting circle of Hobbiton - and every day Kili dutifully went for his solitary walk, and came back far too quickly for Bilbo's liking. Every day Bilbo asked him if he had enjoyed his walk, and every day he said <em>yes<em>, but he never sounded any more convinced of it than he had on the first day, and whenever Bilbo asked him where he had been, it was always the same answer: he had been along Fili's path, there and back again. Fili did not seem at all troubled by this behaviour, declaring that after all, he was walking out on his own, which was exactly what Bilbo had wanted, and if he went the same way every day, well, surely it was only because it was his favourite path. But Bilbo was not at all sure that this was the case, and when a week had passed and nothing had changed, he began to try to think of ways he could once more modify his scheme so that it would achieve the ends he had designed it for.

But no such modification occurred, or at least, not for many days. For one evening, when Kili was helping Bilbo make supper, poaching eggs with great concentration, he suddenly turned to stare at him.

"Hobbit," he said, "why I go walk alone?"

Bilbo frowned at him. "I have told you this before," he said. "I have told you and told you. It is so you can learn to make your own choices. Surely you have not forgotten?"

He waited rather anxiously for Kili's answer, for he had yet to learn everything about the holes that frequently appeared in Kili's memory, but he had told him only a few days before, and he had thought - hoped - that his forgetfulness did not act so swiftly as all that.

"No," Kili said. "I not forgot. But I not understand. I not make choose. I not choose go walk. You choose."

Bilbo's heart sank a little, for he had rather hoped that Kili would not notice the flaw in his scheme. "Well," he said, "I suppose I do choose that you should go. But once you have gone, you choose which way to go, and what to do."

"I go along Fili's path," Kili said, and then frowned. "I went. Or - go?"

"Go," said Bilbo. "Yes, you have always gone along Fili's path. But if you wanted to go a different way, you could. You always choose to go along Fili's path, but you could choose to go another way."

Kili did not respond to this, but only frowned, and then concentrated on fishing the eggs out of the water. Indeed, he did not speak for some time, and Bilbo let him be, turning away to make the toast. In the end, it was not until after supper was eaten and the dishes all put away that Kili took up the conversation again.

"What other way?" he asked.

By now, of course, Bilbo had forgotten the thread of the conversation - for he had had a number of discussions with Fili in the meanwhile - and it took him a moment or two to find it again. "Whatever way you choose," he said, when he finally understood what Kili was asking. "That is the point, you see. You can go anywhere you like."

Kili stared at him. "I not understand," he said.

"Anywhere," said Bilbo. "You understand _anywhere_?" When Kili nodded, he made a gesture, encompassing the whole kitchen, and therefore the whole world. "Anywhere you like," he said. "The Shire is full of beautiful places and beautiful things. Would you not like to go and see some of them?"

Kili hesitated. "Beautiful?" he said.

"Beautiful," Bilbo agreed. "Beautiful is when something looks nice, or sounds nice, perhaps. But not just nice, my lad. It is when something is so marvellous that it steals your breath and gives you a pain here." He touched Kili's chest, over his heart. "A good pain," he added. "That is what _beautiful_ means."

Kili stared at him thoughtfully, and brushed his own fingers over the spot Bilbo had touched. "Good pain?" he said.

"Not like pain from punishment," Bilbo said hastily, feeling momentarily concerned. But Kili did not seem at all discomfited.

"Good pain," he muttered. "Yes, I know this. Like fiddle."

"Exactly," Bilbo agreed. "When Fili plays the fiddle, it is beautiful. But things can look beautiful as well as sounding beautiful, you see. And there are many places in the Shire that look quite beautiful."

Kili watched him for a moment or two, and then looked away. He seemed deep in thought, and touched his fingers once again to his heart. But he did not speak further, and Bilbo did not press him.

* * *

><p>Bilbo had high hopes that his conversation with Kili would lead to some kind of change in his behaviour. And, indeed, it did - though not in the direction that Bilbo desired. For the next day, Kili came back from his walk after barely twenty minutes had passed, looking pale and shaken, and immediately hunched himself into his armchair as if trying to become so small as to be invisible.<p>

"Whatever is the matter?" Bilbo asked in alarm, and Fili, too, rose sharply from his seat by the fire and crossed the room to his brother's chair in two strides, laying a hand on his shoulder and trying to brush his hair away from his face.

"Nothing is matter," Kili whispered, and that was all the sense they could get out of him for the rest of the day, though both Bilbo and Fili tried everything they could think of to get him to explain what had happened. After an hour of this, Fili stormed out of the hobbit hole with a face like thunder, apparently to go and investigate the woods and determine what had so upset his brother. But he returned with nothing further to report - the woods were empty and peaceful, and no-one he had spoken to in Hobbiton had seen Kili all day.

And so the mystery remained. Kili was withdrawn and skittish all day, and slept barely at all in the night, so that when morning came he seemed oddly sunken and sallow. And when Bilbo rose after second breakfast, at the time he was accustomed to tell Kili to go for his walk, the little dwarf actually shrank away from him, and buried himself in his hair, as if he somehow hoped Bilbo would forget he was there at all. Now, Bilbo had managed to overcome all of his guilt at Kili's unhappy reactions on previous occasions, but this time he found himself quite unable to do so, not least because he had not yet the first idea what had so unsettled Kili. What was more, Fili jumped to his feet, too, and shook his head at Bilbo, and Bilbo felt quite sure that, if he did try and shoo Kili out, he would be firmly opposed from that quarter.

"Why don't we all go for a walk?" he said instead. "I have been far too lazy lately."

Fili frowned at Bilbo, but Bilbo knelt by Kili's chair and peered up into his face - what little he could see of it through his hair.

"How is that, my dear lad?" he said. "Would you like to come for a walk with your brother and me?"

For a moment, Kili only sat perfectly still. But then he shifted in his chair, and Bilbo caught a glimpse of his dark eyes staring down at him.

"You not make me alone?" he whispered.

Bilbo's heart fairly broke at this question, and he was forced to sit quiet a moment and swallow down his disappointment and guilt, for it seemed to him that, whatever he had intended with his clever schemes, all he had achieved was to deeply distress his friend. He reached up and patted Kili's knee.

"No, we will not leave you alone," he said. "We will all go together. But only if you are agreeable." He glanced up at Fili. "Only if we are all agreeable."

Fili was still frowning, but after a moment he came forward and put a hand on Kili's shoulder. "If you would like to go out, I will certainly come with you, my brother," he said. "But if you wish to stay here, I will stay here with you, too. I will not leave you alone. We will do whichever you want."

This, though, seemed only to upset Kili further, and he shook his head violently and pulled his feet up into his chair, as if trying to make himself as small as possible. Fili cast Bilbo an alarmed look and dropped to the ground beside him, patting Kili franticly on the knee.

"No, it is not-" he said. "I did not mean - I do not know what I said that was wrong. Please, brother. Do not hide from me."

Kili sat hunched and silent for a moment, but when Fili patted him again he raised his head just a little.

"Not can choose," he whispered. "You choose, not can."

Well, this was an upset indeed to all of Bilbo's plans and schemes! That Kili should not only be deeply upset, but that he should have regressed so that he could not even contemplate the idea of making a decision for himself without terror - it was quite the opposite of everything that Bilbo had hoped for, and his heart sank into his hairy hobbit feet as he sat back on his heels.

"Now, Kili," he said, stumbling over the words a little in his surprise and disappointment. "Surely you do not mean that? It is only a tiny little choice, and your brother and I will be with you either wa-"

"Bilbo!" Fili interrupted sharply, and the words died on Bilbo's tongue when he saw the furious glare Fili was directed towards him. "We will not go out," Fili declared, still glaring at Bilbo, but then he turned his attention towards Kili and stroked his arm soothingly. "We will not go out, my brother," he said, in a much gentler tone. "The hobbit can do what he likes, but you and I will stay here until you feel better."

Bilbo felt rather hurt to be referred to in this dismissive tone, but he told himself it was only that Fili was worried about his brother. Nonetheless, he felt suddenly unwelcome, and a strange feeling it was indeed to be having in his own hobbit hole. "Well," he said, getting to his feet and dusting down his knees, "well, in that case I shall - see about -" And he fled to the kitchen, where he busied himself washing a stack of dishes that were already clean and humming loudly in the hope that it might drown out the thoughts of how spectacularly his plan had failed, and how much he had managed to upset Kili into the bargain. This strategy had only the most limited success, even when Bilbo redoubled his dish-clattering and humming, so that at last he found himself flinging his dishcloth into the water and shaking his head.

"_Drat_ it," he muttered to himself.

"I can't say I disagree," came a voice behind him, and Bilbo started so hard he knocked a teacup from the draining board onto the floor, where it broke into three pieces. He spun to find Fili leaning in the doorway, regarding him without a smile and without apparently the least care for the state of Bilbo's crockery.

"How long have you been there, master dwarf?" Bilbo asked, bending to collect the pieces of china that now decorated his kitchen floor. "Sneaking up on a person is quite rude, I'll have you know."

"I did no sneaking," Fili replied. "It is hardly my fault if you are humming so loudly you cannot even hear a full-grown dwarf approach. Just think if it were orcs, you would be entirely helpless."

"There are no orcs in the Shire!" Bilbo cried. "And I don't see why I should have to be quiet in my own home for fear of losing my favourite teacup - why, it is absurd to even suggest such a thing!"

"Perhaps if you thought less about teacups and more about-" Fili started, but then he stopped and put a hand over his eyes for a brief moment. When he lowered it, the anger that had started in his face was gone. "Why are we arguing?" he asked, sounding suddenly very tired.

Bilbo stared at him, and then shook his head, setting the pieces of the teacup down on the kitchen table and gesturing Fili to a chair. "You are angry with me because I pushed Kili too hard," he said, sitting down himself. "I suppose that is why." Saying it out loud did not make him feel any less guilty, but something of the tightness in his shoulders was relieved nonetheless - for it is always easier to be honest with oneself, even if it is painful to do so.

Fili sighed. "I am not angry," he said. "Or - no more so with you than with myself. But we could not have known." He shook his head, pressing his hands flat against the table. "I just - wish I knew what had happened. Who he spoke to, or what he saw. I have not seen him so upset in months."

"Perhaps he saw nothing but the shadows in his own mind," Bilbo said.

Fili did not look very happy at this answer. "Well, at any rate, he is no closer to making his own choices than he was before," he said. "And we cannot send him out again."

"No," Bilbo said, though it was a rather painful thing to admit. "No, you are right, of course."

He contemplated the wreckage of the teacup for a short time, then heaved a sigh and got to his feet.

"Was it really your favourite cup?" Fili asked, sounding mildly contrite.

"Oh, that old thing," Bilbo said. "I did not care for it at all, to be quite honest."

And he threw the remains of the cup away, and thought no more about it.

* * *

><p>Kili's nervous mood lasted for the rest of the morning and well into the afternoon, and Fili's surliness lasted almost as long, for although Kili sat perfectly still and did not flinch away from his touch, still he was tense indeed whenever Fili tried to put his arm around him. But for once, Fili was not the most strongly affected by his brother's unhappiness, for while Kili tolerated Fili's presence with only a tensing of his shoulders, he seemed to shrink every time Bilbo came near him, and although he answered when Bilbo spoke to him, yet it seemed to Bilbo that there was a spark of fear in his eyes every time Bilbo so much as opened his mouth. This was a new and highly unpleasant circumstance, and Bilbo did not have the first idea how to deal with it. At last, he became very close-mouthed, which was not at all natural for hobbits in general and for Bilbo Baggins in particular. But what else could he do, when it seemed that even the hint of speech from him caused his dear friend's heart to quail? Ah, it was a dreary day indeed, and it was not until late in the afternoon that Kili finally seemed to come to himself a little more, and uncurled himself in his chair. Still, they all passed an uneasy night, and were careful indeed with each other the next day, though Kili, at least, seemed a lot less out of sorts. And of course there was no suggestion at all that they might go out, and no attempt to ask Kili to choose even what they might have for dinner.<p>

The day after that was Esmeralda's birthday, and naturally there was a party to celebrate. All the children of Hobbiton were invited, and not a few from Bywater and beyond into the bargain. Bilbo, Kili and Fili had been invited almost before the party had even been thought of, but now that it came to it, Bilbo was in two minds about whether it was a good idea to attend. Kili was not fond of large gatherings at the best of times, and given his strange behaviour over the last few days, Bilbo found himself greatly concerned that it could lead to disaster. But, after some discussion with Fili, it was decided that perhaps Esmeralda's cheerful presence was exactly what was needed, and that both Bilbo and Fili would keep a close eye on Kili's mood and be ready to take him home the moment he seemed to be growing unhappy. And so, on the day in question, the three of them crossed the river and made their way to Esmeralda's snug little hobbit hole, with Bilbo explaining to Kili all about hobbit birthday customs and, most importantly, all about hobbit birthday cake.

The garden was filled with shrieking hobbitlings when they arrived, but soon after this it began to rain, and Begonia shooed them all inside. A fierce debate then ensued regarding what inside-game should be played, which was ultimately resolved in favour of hide-and-seek. Esmeralda took little part in these arguments - for although she was perfectly talkative and even often loud in the presence of adults, around large groups of other children she tended to be quiet and rather on the outskirts - but when the bossiest of the group, a little boy of perhaps nine whose name Bilbo could not for the life of him remember, turned to Kili, things became rather different.

"Your dwarf will play with us, won't he, Esme?" he asked. "You're always saying how he likes playing with you."

Bilbo opened his mouth to intervene, but it seemed there was no need, for Esmeralda was giving the little hobbit lad a rather withering stare.

"Mr. Kili doesn't play hiding games," she said, as if it was perfectly obvious just by looking at him that such games were out of the question.

The little lad shrugged and ran off to hide, and Esmeralda climbed up into Kili's lap and whispered something in his ear. Then she kissed him soundly on the cheek, giggled, and jumped to the floor to join in the game.

"What did she say, my brother?" Fili asked, looking rather amused.

Kili frowned. "She said she not like other little hobbit," he said. "She said I must not talk him."

"Well, I shouldn't listen to everything Esmeralda says," Bilbo said. "She is only a very little hobbit, after all."

Kili looked puzzled, but not at all distressed, and so Bilbo and Fili settled down to enjoy the rest of the party. Although Kili was not directly involved in the game of hide-and-seek, nonetheless, Esmeralda came and crawled back into his lap as soon as she was found, and, when she was the seeker, she made detailed reports on the progress of the game every few minutes, until at last she came over with a most discontented look on her face.

"I can't find Fredo," she declared. "I've looked _everywhere_." And she folded her arms and looked most put out.

"You not looked everywhere," Kili replied, quite reasonably. "If you looked everywhere, you found her."

"Fredo's a him, not a her," Esmeralda said. "But I've looked _everywhere_, Mr. Kili! Will you help me look?"

"Now, my dear," Bilbo said quickly. "You know Mr. Kili doesn't play hiding games."

Esmeralda pouted for a moment, then hugged Kili's knee and stared up at him. "I can't think of anywhere else!" she said.

Kili frowned, but it was a thoughtful frown. "How many rooms in house?" he asked.

"It's not a house, it's a hobbit hole," Esmeralda said.

"Hobbitole, yes," Kili said. "How many rooms?"

Esmeralda counted on her fingers for a moment. "Seven," she decided at last. "Living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, mama and papa's room, boys' room, and girls' room." She held up seven fingers. "Seven! And I've looked in all of them already!"

"You are sure?" Kili asked. "No more rooms? Hobbit's house has many rooms, small rooms." By _Hobbit's house_ he meant Bag End, of course, but no doubt Esmeralda took him to mean the homes of hobbits in general, and indeed, this was true of many hobbit holes, although of Bag End perhaps even more than most.

Esmeralda frowned. "We-ell," she said, "there's the pantry, I suppose. And the cellar. And the laundry room, but I saw a spider in there once. And the room where mama keeps the winter things, but nobody ever goes in there."

"Yes, this," Kili said. "Room, nobody go in room, is best for hide. Small room, it is good. Small hobbits go in small places. You look here, look for dark place, place too small for-" And here he suddenly stopped, mouth open, and then shook his head. "For big - for big -" he mumbled, and then ducked his head, causing Fili to put a hand on his arm.

"Never mind, my brother," he murmured. "She is not even listening." For Esmeralda had already run off to follow Kili's instructions, surely never once considering why he might be so confident on the subject of hiding places and their relative quality. And indeed, only a few moments later she came running back, having now found Fredo and bursting with pride and triumph.

"You did it!" she said to Kili. "How did you know he would be there? You're very good at hide and seek, Mr. Kili!" And she tugged at Kili's sleeve until he got down onto the floor with her, where she proceeded to show him some small game that involved colourful beads and a strange network or maze made out of dried straw. Kili seemed happy enough to listen, and Esmeralda refused all invitations to continue playing hide and seek, declaring that she was playing with Mr. Kili and they should all just go off and entertain themselves, or words to that effect. Bilbo smiled to see Kili so calm, despite the presence of so many loud little hobbitlings, and shortly thereafter he allowed himself to be drawn into a conversation with Begonia, who seemed quite relieved that there were adult guests at the party besides herself and Adalgrim. So it was that Bilbo rather lost track of what Kili was doing until he became aware that the conversation in that part of the room had become oddly loud and high-pitched. He glanced over to see Kili still seated on the floor, looking troubled, and Esmeralda standing in front of him with her hands on her hips, talking to the same young lad who had asked Kili to play hide and seek before.

"I'll teach you the rules, it's not hard," the little lad was saying, apparently to Kili.

"It's not because he doesn't know the rules," Esmeralda replied, rather tartly. "He's played before, haven't you, Mr. Kili? He's very good, better than _you_."

"He's not!" the hobbit lad said, looking outraged. "I'm the best! Everyone says so! I don't believe he's played before, you're just pretending because he doesn't know the rules."

"Mr. Kili's the best at everything," Esmeralda declared. "Tell him you've played before, Mr. Kili! He's saying you haven't, tell him you have!"

She turned beseeching eyes on Kili, clearly feeling that this was some important point of pride. Kili hunched his shoulders and nodded.

"I played before," he said quietly, not looking the little lad in the eye. "Many times."

"Well, then, why won't you play now?" the lad asked, as if there could be no possible other reason.

Kili opened and closed his mouth, then shook his head. "It is not nice game," he muttered.

"But-" the little lad started, and then suddenly Fili was there, striding into the middle of them and towering over the boy.

"That's enough bothering my brother," he said, and though his tone was not unkind, still the boy looked suddenly rather terrified. "If he does not want to play, it is none of your concern why." He shot a mildly irritated glance at Bilbo - who realised, belatedly, that he should probably have called a halt to the conversation rather earlier - and then took Kili by the arm and raised him to his feet, restoring him to his chair and out of the realm of the children. There was a brief moment of tense silence, and then Begonia stood and clapped her hands.

"Presents!" she cried.

The cry was taken up from all corners of the hobbit hole, and suddenly the room was full of eager-looking hobbitlings, with Esmeralda standing at the centre of all. Begonia brought in a pile of parcels, and the central ritual of hobbit birthdays began in earnest. Being, as she was, only seven years old, Esmeralda had not had the chance to accumulate a great stock of mathoms to give away as older hobbits do, so most of the presents she gave were things she had made herself (with the help of her parents) - there were many little bags of tiny cakes or biscuits, oddly-shaped teacups from an attempt at pottery-shaping that apparently had not gone marvellously well (and Bilbo had no doubt these would be quickly added to the Hobbiton circulating stock of mathoms, since they did not look like they would serve their intended purpose very successfully), and, once Esmeralda reached her own brothers and sisters, some more personal presents, such as hair decorations made of feathers and bright buttons. Partway through the proceedings, Kili turned to Bilbo with a small frown.

"What is happen?" he whispered.

"It's presents, Mr. Kili," Begonia put in. "Don't dwarves give away presents on their birthdays?"

Kili's frown deepened as he considered this question, and Bilbo watched closely to see what answer he would give, and wondered if he remembered his own birthday, which had passed while they were travelling and had thus been a very quiet affair. Begonia waited expectantly, but without pushing, and at last Kili shook his head.

"Dwarfs - presents - dwarfs not give, dwarfs, dwarfs - have? Dwarfs have presents?"

"_Get_," Fili murmured, and Kili threw him a grateful glance.

"Yes, get," he said. "Dwarfs not give, dwarfs get. At birthday."

"Good heavens, how peculiar," Begonia said, but she smiled fondly at Kili as she said it. "Well, hobbits give presents on their birthdays, and that is what is happening now. And I think-" and now she turned to the hobbitlings and saw that the last of the Took children had received their gift "-I think you will soon see how nice that is."

And now Esmeralda turned to Bilbo and proffered up an oddly-shaped parcel about six inches tall. "Mr. Bilbo!" she said, eyes shining with the joy of giving.

"Oh, now, you certainly did not need to get me anything!" Bilbo cried - for it was not generally custom for children to give presents to the adults who attended their parties. "What a generous little hobbitling you are." And he unwrapped the parcel to find inside a piece of wood that was shaped rather like a mushroom.

"I found it in the woods!" Esmeralda said. "I though you would like it."

"Ah, I like it indeed," Bilbo said. "How peculiar! Trees really are marvellous things." And he held the odd little mushroom up for everyone to admire, then set it on his lap and waited to see what would happen next.

"Mr. Fili," said Esmeralda now, holding out a much smaller parcel. Fili took it with a nod and opened it carefully. Inside was a child's bracelet made of simple, uncarved wooden beads, far too small to fit around the wrist of a grown hobbit, let alone a dwarf.

"Thank you, Esmeralda," Fili said gravely, holding the bracelet up for everyone to see. But he shot Bilbo a brief, confused look, as if asking if there was something about hobbit gifts he had misunderstood.

"It's for your hair," Esmeralda informed him, and when Fili turned to look at her, she nodded. "You can cut the beads off and put them in your hair."

Fili's face broke into a broad smile. "I can, at that," he said. "And I shall be proud to wear them." He tucked the little bracelet into his pocket and turned expectantly - as did all the onlookers - to see what Esmeralda would give to Kili. But she suddenly seemed uncharacteristically shy, and stuck her fingers into her mouth as she stared up at him. Kili stared back, and seemed not to realise that he ought to have a present next, for he suddenly reached out and patted her on the head.

"It is good - it is _kind_," he said. "Give many presents. Kind Esmalda."

"Esme, don't you have something else to give?" Begonia asked, and this seemed to be the impetus Esmeralda needed, for she reached down and picked up a flat parcel wrapped in the brightest wrappings that had yet been seen and tied with a pretty ribbon. She held it out to Kili without a word, and when he took it, she immediately started chewing on her fingers again.

"It is present for me?" Kili asked, and when Esmeralda did not reply, he looked at Fili.

"Yes, my brother," Fili said. "It is for you."

Kili stared down at the parcel in his lap, brushing his fingertips against the ribbon. "Thank you Esmalda," he said. "It is nice."

Fili leaned over and whispered something in Kili's ear, and Kili frowned and glanced at him. When Fili nodded and pointed at the parcel, Kili looked mildly upset, but a moment later he began - very carefully - to untie the ribbon. The process of unwrapping the parcel was nothing at all like the eager glee with which the hobbitlings had torn into their own presents: Kili took the utmost care, to the point where Bilbo began to feel rather frustrated and like he might snatch the parcel out of Kili's hands and finish the unwrapping himself. But at last, the coverings opened up, and the contents were revealed.

It was a picture. Not a detailed, careful likeness as Ori's pictures were, but a childish drawing, with shaky lines and malformed figures. Still, it was clear that a great deal of work had gone into it. In the centre of the picture stood two figures holding hands. One was enormously tall and swathed in dark scribblings that Bilbo surmised were supposed to be hair. The other was much smaller, wearing a triangle that Bilbo supposed was a dress, and holding a large sword in one hand. In the background were some much smaller figures, one of whom had an exaggerated beard, in the bottom left was what might have been a forest, and off to the right was a castle with what appeared to be another triangle on a stick standing on top of it. All in all, the paper was rather crammed with images which had no clear relation to each other, and Bilbo found himself very curious indeed to see what Kili would make of it.

Esmeralda was standing very still, a hopeful expression on her face. Kili stared at the picture for a long moment, then lifted his hand and brushed his fingers across the face of the small figure with the sword.

"It is you," he said. "Picture you in it." He looked up at Esmeralda and nodded. "It is good have picture you in it. Very good. Thank you Esmalda."

Bilbo frowned at the picture, trying to understand how Kili knew that the small figure was Esmeralda, but the hobbitling herself merely beamed. "You're in it, too!" she said. "We're going on an adventure!"

"Yes," Kili said, touching his fingertips to the face of the enormous figure surrounded by black hair. "I as well in it. And Fili." Here he touched the small figure with the large beard. "Fili also come - enture?"

"Adventure!" Esmeralda said. "Does Mr. Fili like adventures?" She gave Fili a rather doubtful look, though she appeared to be quite sure that Kili himself liked adventures, or, if he did not like them, he would nonetheless be happy to participate in them with her.

"Mr. Fili likes adventures very much," Fili said. He seemed quite taken with the picture, and pointed to one of the other small figures. "And that is Mr. Bilbo, is it not? He is very good at adventures, you know."

"Good," Esmeralda declared. "Mr. Kili won't want to come if Mr. Bilbo doesn't come, will you, Mr. Kili?"

Kili frowned at her. "No," he said, though Bilbo was not at all certain he had understood the question. "Who this?" he asked, tapping the last of the small figures.

"Mama, of course!" Esmeralda said, and climbed up into her mother's lap to give her a kiss. "We can't go without Mama."

Begonia looked as though she couldn't decide whether she was pleased to be invited or horrified to be coerced into an adventure. At last, she settled on something close to fond exasperation, and pointed at the triangle on a stick.

"And who is that, my love?" she asked.

"Gandalf," Kili said quietly, touching the triangle. Then he looked up at Esmeralda. "It is Gandalf, yes?"

"It's a wizard," Esmeralda informed him. "He's going to help us."

Kili nodded and looked back down at the picture. "Gandalf," he muttered.

"Do you like it?" Esmeralda asked, bouncing up and down a little on her mother's lap. "I drew it, Mr. Kili!"

"You draw?" Kili said, glancing up at her. "You are good draw. Good picture, thank you Esmalda."

Esmeralda laughed with glee and tugged on her mother's sleeve. "I told you he would like it," she said in a loud whisper.

"And I never doubted it," Begonia said, kissing Esmeralda on the forehead. "How could he not, when it is such a fine picture of him?"

"It's a picture of _us_," Esmeralda said, and then squirmed off her mother's lap and ran to Kili's side. She paused when she got there, staring up at him. Kili stared back down at her, and then a moment later he turned to Fili.

"You can take picture?" he asked, holding it out. Fili frowned and opened his mouth, most assuredly about to explain to Kili that it was his picture and he should keep it, but then Kili continued. "Esmalda want sit legs," he said.

Fili broke into a smile, and indeed, Bilbo found himself smiling, too, to see such a display of intuition from his friend. The picture was duly passed over, and Esmeralda climbed happily into Kili's lap and hugged him soundly, then curled up as if she planned to spend the rest of the day there. And Kili - Kili patted her on the head and then placed his arms in such a way as to form a protective barricade.

Fili turned to Bilbo, his smile growing wider still. "What excellent birthday parties you hobbits do have," he said.

"That we do, master dwarf," Bilbo said. "That we do."

* * *

><p>That evening, Bag End felt very cosy indeed, with the memory of Kili's strange episode seeming much more distant now that there were new, much more pleasant memories to occupy them. After supper, the three friends sat by the fire engaged in their various pursuits. Fili was carefully carving out the inside of one of his new beads to make it large enough to attach to the end of a braid, Bilbo was reading, and Kili was examining his new picture with great care and attention. After perhaps half an hour of companionable silence, Kili looked up.<p>

"Hobbit," he said, "when we go enture?"

Bilbo frowned at him in confusion. "Enture?" he asked.

"Enture," Kili said, and then glanced at Fili and pointed at the picture. "Esmalda said go enture."

"Oh! _Adventure_," Bilbo said.

"Adenture," Kili said, and then followed the short process of repetition until he had it right. When Bilbo was satisfied, he nodded, and Kili nodded back.

"When we go adventure?" he asked.

"Hm, well," Bilbo said, "Esmeralda's picture is not really supposed to be a picture of a real thing, you know. And at any rate, she is far too small to go on adventures for many years yet."

Kili stared at him. "Picture is not real?" he asked.

"No, it is not real," Bilbo replied. "It is not like Ori's pictures. It is something that Esmeralda would like to do, and so she drew a picture of it. But that does not mean you will never go on an adventure."

Kili nodded slowly. "Picture is not real," he muttered to himself. "Hobbit, where adventure is? It is in Shire?"

Fili snorted at this, and when Kili glanced at him he laid a hand on his brother's arm. "_Adventure_ is not a place, my brother," he said. "It is like a journey where you do not know what will happen to you along the way."

"Like when we went to the Lonely Mountain," Bilbo put in, for that particular journey had become the very definition of _adventure_ in his mind.

Kili's face grew disbelieving. "It is this?" he said, and then shook his head. "No, I not understood. Go to mountain? Go to mountain is adventure?"

"It certainly was," Bilbo said. "It is just as your brother said: a journey where we did not know what was going to happen to us."

This did not seem to relieve Kili's confusion. He pointed at the picture and shook his head again. "You - Esmalda want this? Go adventure, like go mountain? Why she want? It is - many bad."

"Oh," Bilbo said, suddenly understanding - for it is very easy to think of only the exciting parts of an adventure when you are curled up before the fire telling stories, and to forget all the misery and horror, and of course that is why those who have never been on an adventure wish to go so much - because they hear only the excitement and do not consider anything else. "Oh, well, yes, certainly some bad things happened to us." And here he paused and remembered Kili's knife against Fili's throat, and the dreadful gloom of the elvish dungeon, and how Kili stared at nothing after Laketown, and - and, oh, and the horrors of the battle with the orcs, oh, he was a fool! "Yes," he said again, "yes, yes, of course, I do not mean to say that all adventures are like that. No, I do not think - I do not think Esmeralda wants to go on an adventure like that one. I am sorry to have confused you, my lad."

"But Kili," Fili said, "that adventure was full of hardship, it is true, but that is not all it was. If we had not - if we had not gone on that adventure, we never would have found you."

Kili turned to stare at him, and Fili held his gaze, keeping a hand firmly on his arm. "We would not have found you, my brother," he said again. Kili looked down and away, but a moment later he raised his head and met his brother's eyes again.

"You found me," he said, so quietly that Bilbo was not entirely sure he intended for Fili to hear it. But Fili did, and he pressed his forehead briefly against his brother's.

"We found you," he agreed.

Bilbo cleared his throat. "Well, anyway," he said, "adventures are not always miserable, my lad. What about when we walked from the mountain to here? That was not so terrible, was it?"

Kili turned to look at him. "Walk to Shire was as well adventure?" he asked.

"It certainly was," Bilbo said. "Although a rather less fraught adventure, in general. And indeed, sometimes even stepping out of your front door for half an hour can be an adventure, especially when you are as young as little Esmeralda. Adventures do not have to be filled with peril and fear - they can be as simple as climbing a tree. It only means doing something different and new, really."

Kili considered this. "Climb tree is adventure?" he asked, turning to Fili.

"The way you climb, it is the greatest of adventures," Fili said with a smile. "We are always having adventures, you and I. Just as it was when we were children."

Kili sat back in his chair, his expression making it clear that he was settling in for a long period of reflection. Bilbo smiled at Fili, pleased to have at least diverted Kili's attention from the contemplation of their journey to Erebor, and more than pleased that the darkness of the previous few days seemed to have dissipated entirely.

And later that night, he had another idea.


	3. Chapter 3

Having witnessed the effect his previous schemes had had on Kili, Bilbo was rather more cautious about his new idea. He let it sit in his mind for two days, turning it over and prodding it every now and again to see if he could see where it might unravel, and in the meantime he paid close attention to Kili's mood. When he found no holes in the idea and no unusual darkness in Kili, he at last brought it hesitantly towards the light, sitting Fili down one evening and explaining it to him. Fili, to his credit, kept his temper, but refused to be party to the idea, declaring that they had done quite enough meddling with Kili's state of mind, and if he would not make his own choices then he would not, and that was all there was to it. But Bilbo knew Fili well, and he waited, biding his time and sure that the seed that he had planted would eventually bear fruit. And so it was, for a few days later Fili came to Bilbo and allowed that the scheme at least seemed unlikely to spin out of their control as the last one had, and it was true that the problem of Kili's passivity was indeed a problem, and seemed likely to remain so indefinitely if nothing was done.

"But if it upsets him-" he started, and Bilbo nodded vigorously.

"We will stop immediately," he said. "At the first sign of upset, master dwarf, I promise."

And so, one morning no more than a week after the birthday party, Bilbo turned to Kili with a smile.

"Would you like to play a game?" he asked.

Kili frowned at him. "Game is for children," he said.

"Well, no, not quite," Bilbo said. "Children certainly play more games than adults do, but that does not mean that adults never play games at all. Card games, for example, or games with dice-" He trailed off, here, remembering Kili's description of the drowning game the orcs played, and hoping (though he had little doubt it was in vain) that this was not also the first thing that sprang to Kili's mind.

Kili watched him a moment, then turned to look at Fili. Fili smiled, though he was rather tense.

"I would like to play," Fili said, apparently to Bilbo, though he looked only at his brother.

"Well, then, we shall play," Bilbo decided, knowing that getting an answer out of Kili might take rather a long time. "Now, here is the game. Kili, you will go to one of the other rooms in the hobbit hole, and then your brother and I will try to guess which room you are in. Whichever one of us is right wins the game. Do you understand?"

Kili looked worried. "It is hiding game?"

"Not at all," Bilbo said. "No, you are not hiding, I do not want you to hide, certainly not. Just go to another room and wait for us there. But - only the rooms at the top of the hobbit hole, none of the cellars or deeper rooms, just to make it easier for us." He had been very careful not to use the word _choose_, but he felt it was also important to limit the number of options as much as possible, so as to reduce the anxiety associated with decision making. "Now, do you understand?"

Kili opened his mouth and closed it again. "I go other room," he said. "It is - nothing else?"

"Nothing else," Bilbo confirmed. "Just go there and wait for a few minutes. Can you do that, my lad?"

"What I should do in other room?" Kili asked, shooting a worried glance at Fili.

"Well - you can take your pictures with you and look at them," Bilbo said, picking up the sheaf of pictures and thrusting them into Kili's arms. "Just sit down and look at your pictures. That is what you should do."

This more detailed set of instructions seemed to be enough to remove some of the tension from Kili's face, and Bilbo was glad of it, for he felt sure that one more worried question would have been enough to have Fili calling off the whole enterprise. Kili got to his feet, the pictures in his arms, and stood uncertainly for a moment.

"I should go now?" he asked.

"Yes, now," Bilbo said. "Off you go."

And Kili went.

Bilbo stared after him, rather amazed despite himself that nothing had yet gone wrong. Indeed, he was so busy being surprised that he did not remember the next part of his scheme until Fili spoke.

"The mirror, Bilbo," he said in a sharp whisper, and Bilbo jumped and took up a little hand mirror that he had placed beside his chair in preparation. At Fili's insistence, the two of them had rigged up a careful system of mirrors that would allow Bilbo to see exactly which room Kili chose to go into, so that there was no danger of their losing him even for a minute or two. Now Bilbo peered into the mirror and saw Kili standing in the hallway looking rather lost.

"Where-" Fili started, but Bilbo held up his hand.

_Wait_, he signed in _iglishmêk_ - feeling rather proud of himself for remembering it - and Fili subsided, though he still sat on the edge of his chair. Bilbo found himself leaning forward, too, waiting and waiting as Kili remained standing in the hall, for if the plan was to go wrong at any point, surely it would be now, when Kili actually had to make his choice, no matter how limited his options and how little was at stake. A minute passed, then two, then ten, and still Kili made no move, so that Bilbo began to worry that he would have to call the game off after all.

And then, Kili went into the dwarves' bedroom.

Bilbo sat back a little in relief. "The bedroom," he murmured to Fili.

"Yours or ours?" Fili asked, though the question was a little academic, since Bilbo had not slept in his own bedroom for more than a month.

"Yours," Bilbo replied. He smiled and raised his voice. "Well, master dwarf, we should be guessing. I guess - your bedroom."

Fili looked suddenly irritated. "I guess the kitchen," he said loudly. "Though I would have guessed the bedroom if you had not guessed it first."

"Ah, well, let's see which of us is right," Bilbo said, and rose to his feet. They went first to the kitchen, loudly declared it to be empty, and then betook themselves to the bedroom. There, of course, they found Kili, sitting in the corner of the bed holding his pictures in his hands. He looked up when Bilbo and Fili came in - or in fact, perhaps he had been watching the door already - and nodded.

"Bedroom," he said.

"The bedroom, indeed," Bilbo said. "I am the winner of this round! Now, shall we play again?"

They did play again, this time with Fili being the one to go to another room (for Bilbo did not want Kili to feel that he was being singled out and thus perhaps unravel the reasons behind the game), and although Kili had some trouble with the guessing portion, still he eventually proffered the opinion that Fili might be in the dwarves' bedroom. Bilbo was not holding his mirror, but nonetheless he heard the slightest of sounds from the hall and thought that if Fili had not been in the dwarves' bedroom before, he certainly was now.

And so it continued, this strange little game, and each time it was Kili's turn he would linger in the hall for a little less time, and Bilbo's heart would grow a little lighter. And then, when they reached the fourth round, he stood only three or four minutes before turning and stepping through the door to the kitchen.

"Kitchen," Bilbo muttered to Fili.

"I guess he is in the kitchen!" Fili cried immediately. He was, as it turned out, rather competitive, which Bilbo thought was an odd thing to be in a game where the answers were already known, but he was happy enough to indulge his friend if it made him less anxious about his brother.

"I guess the bathroom," he said, and rose to his feet. The bathroom, of course, proved to be empty, and the two of them trooped back down the hallway to the kitchen, only to find that it was empty, too.

Fili turned to Bilbo with a frown. "I thought you said kitchen?" he whispered.

Bilbo nodded, frowning himself and turning around. Could Kili have decided to hide after all? But no, why should he do such a thing, when he knew the rules and disliked hiding so much? But then Bilbo had seen him step through the kitchen door with his own eyes. And where else-

-but then his eyes lighted on the door to the pantry, which stood slightly ajar.

"Ah," he said, and gestured to Fili, pointing. After all, the pantry was large enough to be considered a room, and it was certainly at the top of the hobbit hole, so there was no reason why Kili might not consider it a perfectly sensible choice.

"I guess the pantry," Fili said immediately, although he had the good grace to look a little sheepish a moment later. Bilbo shook his head in mild exasperation and reached to open the door.

Kili sat tucked into a corner of the shelves with his pictures on the floor in front of him. He was not looking at them, though, nor even watching the door. Instead, he was staring up at a shelf of cheeses, his eyes huge in the half-light.

"Pantry it is," said Bilbo with a smile. But Fili, now standing in the doorway, was frowning at his brother.

"What are you looking at?" he asked, turning to stare at the cheeses himself as if expecting an orc to jump out from between them.

Kili blinked, and then seemed to shake himself a little. He turned his head to look at Fili, but his gaze kept creeping to one or other shelf.

"You did guess right?" he asked.

Fili nodded, watching Kili with a puzzled expression. "I guessed right," he said. "I won again."

"You are very good," Kili said, staring at a jar of pickled onions. "You always won."

"Yes," said Fili, rather absently, given the efforts he had been making to claim the winner's crown. He glanced around at the pantry shelves and then back at Kili. "Are you hungry?" he asked, though considering they had finished second breakfast less than an hour before, it could hardly have been a very serious question.

Kili managed to tear his eyes away from the food for a moment. "No," he said, and then seemed to become aware that both Bilbo and Fili were staring at him. He stumbled to his feet, picking up his pictures and cradling them to his chest. "We play again?"

There was a moment's silence, and then Bilbo stepped forward with a smile.

"I think that is enough for now," he said. "Fili is clearly the winner. It is lucky for him he knows you so very well."

"Yes," Kili said, as though he was not really listening, but he followed them out of the pantry easily enough, though he cast a backward glance or two at it before they left the kitchen altogether. Bilbo, meanwhile, gave the pantry a good hard stare before stepping back into the living room.

He had a feeling it might soon come in rather handy.

* * *

><p>Even Fili owned that Bilbo's new plan had been an unqualified success: Kili had made his own choice - four times! - and there had been no unpleasant or difficult scenes, and no lingering consequences that Bilbo could make out. Indeed, if Kili even noticed that he had been tricked into making decisions, he said nothing about it. He was quiet for much of the rest of the day, but that in itself was not unusual and could not be attributed specifically to the game they had played. And so the next day, Bilbo rose from his chair and smiled at Kili.<p>

"Now, then," he said. "Would you like to play our game again?"

To his surprise and delight, Kili got immediately to his feet and picked up his pictures, with something akin to eagerness in his face. "Same game?" he said. "I go room?"

"The same, indeed," Bilbo replied. "And yes, since you are ready, by all means go first."

Kili nodded, but then hesitated, glancing at the door to the hall. "It is - all rooms are same?" he asked, watching Bilbo without facing him head on. "No room better, no room worse?"

"All the rooms are the same," Bilbo said. "It makes no difference to your brother or me which one you ch- which, which one you go into."

"Yes," Kili said, and then turned and made his way out into the hall. Bilbo sat down with a bump and snatched up his mirror, and this time he saw that Kili waited for no more than two minutes before slipping into the kitchen.

"Kitchen," Bilbo whispered to Fili.

Fili nodded. "I guess the kitchen," he said. And now it was Bilbo's turn to smirk, for once, although the expression did not feel quite right upon his face, and he rather thought he might look like he was in pain.

"I guess the pantry," he said.

Sudden realisation dawned on Fili's face, followed by annoyance. "Well, that is hardly fair," he said.

"I don't see why," Bilbo said, trying unsuccessfully to hide his smile. "I allowed you to guess first. It is not my fault you guessed wrong."

"I might still be right," Fili said.

But of course he was not, for the kitchen was empty of Kili, and when they opened the door to the pantry they found him there just as on the day before, his pictures on the floor in front of him and his head raised to stare at the shelves of food. He glanced at the door when Bilbo and Fili came in, but seemed less than enthused to see them.

"You guess fast," he said.

"No faster than on any other occasion," Fili replied. He did not announce who had won, and Bilbo took pity on him and held his own tongue (though he certainly marked his victory onto his mental scoresheet). Kili got to his feet with a hint of reluctance, but this time it was Fili who glanced back at the pantry as they left, and then frowned at his brother as if trying to solve some kind of puzzle.

They played twice more - although Kili seemed rather distracted - and then it was Kili's turn again. This time, he barely hesitated before stepping into the kitchen, but Bilbo turned to Fili - whose mouth was already open, no doubt to guess the pantry - and put a finger to his lips.

"Don't guess yet," he whispered. "Let's give him a few minutes."

Fili closed his mouth, but he frowned at Bilbo. "But he went into the kitchen?" he whispered.

"He certainly did," Bilbo replied. "I think you and I both know he will not stay there, though."

Fili lapsed into a short, troubled silence, then shook his head. "He says he is not hungry," he said. "And he cannot be, for we eat twice as much here as we would in Erebor. Yet-" He cast Bilbo a worried glance. "You do not think he is hungry, do you?"

"Oh, no, master dwarf," Bilbo said with a smile. "I do not think he is hungry in the least. But it is clear he likes to look at the food."

This only increased the trouble in Fili's face. "But why, if he does not want to eat it?" he asked.

Bilbo considered this for a moment. "Well," he said, "perhaps - perhaps he finds it beautiful, as you or I might a painting or a tapestry."

"But it is only food," Fili said. "Why should he care so much to look at food?"

It was Bilbo's turn to frown, now, for it seemed to him that Fili was being very obtuse. "Well, if you had been on the brink of starvation for twenty-five years, you might like to look at food as well, master dwarf," he whispered.

"Aye, but he is not starving _now_," Fili replied, his face taking on a stubborn expression. "You feed him enough to keep a whole troop of dwarves alive, and he has not been starving for a year or more. He is not starving any more, Bilbo."

Bilbo opened his mouth to argue back, but then he beheld a hint of misery beneath the mulishness in his friend's face, and he felt a glimmer of understanding. Kili's desire to look at the food was harmless in enough in itself, of course; but to Fili, it seemed it was first and foremost a reminder of everything that had happened, everything that Kili had lost - that they had all lost - a reminder that no matter how far they had come, they were a long way from escaping the long shadows cast by the orcs. He sighed and reached over to pat Fili's arm.

"Let it just be enough that there is something that he wants, that makes him happy," he said. "Let that just be enough for now, my dear friend."

Fili subsided into his chair, but he looked rather sullen and picked discontentedly at a thread unravelling from his sleeve until Bilbo at last decided that enough time had passed for them to go and collect Kili.

"I guess the pantry," Fili said, but he seemed to have lost his enthusiasm for the game.

"I guess the kitchen," said Bilbo, for he saw no reason for them to go trooping off to the bathroom or further afield if they did not have to. "Come along, then."

Kili was in the pantry, of course, but the longer period of time he had had alone in there seemed to have had a slightly odd effect on him. He appeared almost dazed, and Bilbo had to pull him to his feet and shake him a little by the arm to properly catch his attention.

"Are you all right, my lad?" he asked, feeling mildly concerned.

But Kili nodded, and his eyes seemed clear enough, and he did not avoid Bilbo's gaze. And so Bilbo led him back to the living room, and they played on for almost an hour. Whenever Kili took a turn, Bilbo and Fili allowed him some ten minutes to himself in the pantry before they went to find him - and of course, Fili guessed correctly every time, and won the game once again. But by the fourth (and last) time they went to collect Kili from the pantry, his dazed look had been replaced by a frown which he directed at Bilbo.

"Is something the matter?" Bilbo asked when they were all back in the living room and Kili was still frowning.

Kili glanced at the door through to the kitchen, and then back at Bilbo. "Fili won game," he said.

"He did indeed," Bilbo replied. Fili straightened a little in his chair - he had been somewhat cheered by his victory, but still seemed concerned about Kili's affinity for the pantry.

"He also yesterday won," Kili said.

"Yes," Bilbo replied. "He is very good at guessing where you might go."

"Yes," Kili said, mouth twitching unhappily. He did not look at Fili, but only stared at Bilbo. "Today I go same room, four times," he said. "Always same room."

Bilbo hesitated, beginning to wonder quite what this was about. "Yes, you did," he said. "But that is perfectly all right. It is not against the rules."

"Always same room," Kili said again. "You never guess right. Only Fili guess."

"Well, I-" Bilbo started, feeling oddly as though he had been caught doing something he shouldn't. "I -"

"Bilbo did guess right," Fili put in. "He guessed right the first time. I guessed right all the other times."

"Quite right!" Bilbo said. "Yes, I guessed right the first time. Your brother thought you were in the kitchen."

Kili did not reply to this, but he did not look very satisfied with the answer. Still, he dropped his head, and stared at his knees for a moment or two. Just when Bilbo thought he had escaped from scrutiny, however, the little dwarf looked up again.

"Hobbit," he said, "why we play game?"

"Er," Bilbo said, scrambling for an explanation that did not reveal the true purpose. "Because - because it is fun." Kili did not seem to have a grasp yet on what _fun_ meant, and so this seemed to be a safe claim to make.

"Fun," Kili said, and glanced at Fili, who nodded in affirmation. But Kili turned back to Bilbo and stared at him so intently that Bilbo rather felt as though he could see into his mind and divine all his secrets. "I go same room, always same. Game is easy. Why it is fun?"

"Because-" Bilbo said, and then found himself unable to continue. "Fun is very hard to explain, my lad," he said at last, and felt a pang of guilt at deliberately misleading Kili as to the meaning of a word.

But Kili, as it turned out, would not be misled. "It is because I choose," he said, and then frowned deeply and looked from Bilbo to Fili and back. "It is because I choose, yes? Choose room?"

Bilbo did his very best to look blank, but he felt sure he had the appearance of a rabbit, frozen in the undergrowth when a fox is on the prowl. "I don't know what you mean," he squeaked. But even as he said it, Fili leaned forward in his chair.

"Yes, my brother," he said. "We are trying to help you learn to choose. The game is helping you to choose."

Bilbo stared at Fili in astonishment, but Fili only shook his head. "You promised him we would not lie to him," he said.

And it was true, of course: Bilbo had promised this very thing, and now he was reminded of this, he felt the guilt in his stomach intensify. But if Kili was angry about being lied to, he voiced no complaint. He only sat back in his chair and frowned at nothing for a long moment, then nodded.

"Yes," he said. "Game help. Yes, I choose." He turned to look at Bilbo. "I choose room."

"Yes," Bilbo said. "Yes, you chose a room. More than once."

"Always same room," Kili said, as if to himself. "I choose." He shook his head. "Why is game more easier choose?"

This sentence was mangled enough that, in ordinary circumstances, Bilbo would have stopped to correct it. But he felt that there was something Kili was struggling towards, and he was loath to break his momentum, so he let it be. "Perhaps because-" he said, thinking hard, "-perhaps because it was not very important? It did not matter which room you chose?"

Kili stared at him for so long that Bilbo began to feel a little uncomfortable, despite the fact that he was well accustomed to the intensity of his friend's gaze. But at last, he looked away, glancing at Fili and then at the floor.

"It was not important," he muttered.

"Not to us," Fili said suddenly, "it did not matter to us at all which room you went into. But, Kili," - and here he leaned forward even more, so that he was on the very edge of his chair - "did it - perhaps it mattered to you? You chose the same room again and again - maybe that was why it was easier. Because - there was something you wanted. You wanted to go into that room."

And now Bilbo felt himself suddenly alight with understanding. Of course! Every time he had tried to coax Kili into making decisions before, he had worked very hard to make sure there was nothing at stake - that there was little to choose between the options, and that the outcome would change nothing. But here - here had been a decision in which one of the choices had been clearly preferable, to Kili at least, and in the meantime he had been specifically assured that Bilbo and Fili cared only that he made a choice, and not what that choice might be. Ah! Here was the key, then, that he had been missing all this time.

But if Bilbo felt himself very much enlightened, Kili did not seem so at all. Indeed, he looked more worried than anything, and he seemed to want to hunch and shrink, although he did not quite do so. "I not," he said, "I not - not want. I not want."

Fili put a hand on his arm. "But you went in there," he said. "You kept going in there."

Kili looked up at him, open-mouthed. "Room is good," he whispered. "Good in room."

"Aye, my brother," Fili said with a warm smile. "You liked it in there. You wanted to go in."

For a moment or two, Kili did not seem capable of speech. Then he blinked. "I liked," he said. "I - I wanted? I wanted this?"

"Yes," Fili replied. "You wanted this."

Fili's words were enough to send Kili into a fit of contemplation that lasted for hours. After a while, Bilbo got up to make them all some tea, and when he came back, he was surprised to find that Kili was sitting alone in the living room, sunk deep in thought. Bilbo placed his blackberry tea by his elbow and went in search of Fili.

He found him in the pantry, of all places, and how he had slipped in there without Bilbo hearing him, he had not the first idea. Fili stood examining the shelves in the corner with the aid of a lamp, running his fingers gently along the wood. He seemed not to have noticed Bilbo's entrance, and jumped a little when Bilbo coughed behind him.

"Am I to have two pantry-dwelling dwarves on my hands now?" Bilbo asked with a smile.

"Bilbo," Fili said, "I was just thinking - if we took off the ends of these shelves here" - and here he traced a line down the shelves a foot or two from the corner - "and here, we could make an alcove." He stood back, eyeing the shelves with a frown. "I am not much of a carpenter," he said. "Dwarves are more skilled in metal and stone than wood. But if I could borrow some tools-"

"An alcove?" said Bilbo, finding his voice after his initial surprise. "An - but why would we need an alcove?"

Fili stared at him like the answer was obvious. "For Kili's chair," he said, and then suddenly seemed to realise that, whatever conversation he had been having in his head, he had not spoken it aloud to Bilbo. "I mean - because he likes it in here. He likes to sit in here."

Bilbo raised his eyebrows. "Not three hours ago you were most unhappy about the idea of him liking it in here," he said.

Fili's mouth tightened, and Bilbo saw that the unhappiness had not gone away, but only been pushed aside. "I was," Fili said. "But - he wants something, Bilbo. It is - he has not -" And here he trailed off and turned back sharply to the shelves. "Here," he said hoarsely, and then cleared his throat and pointed. "If we cut here I think - I think it will do."

Bilbo pondered for a moment if permanently altering the structure of his hobbit hole might be a rather hasty reaction to what was, when all was said and done, only a preference shown in a silly parlour game. And then he decided that there was nothing wrong with a bit of hastiness, every now and then.

"I'll find you a saw," he said.

* * *

><p>Bag End disposed of all manner of household goods, some useful and many not particularly so, so that, were one to require anything in particular, there can be no doubt that a thorough search would produce such an item. Bilbo, however, had had no cause to perform repairs to the hobbit hole for many years, for he had always asked Holman Greenhand to undertake such tasks, and so, although he knew that woodworking tools must exist somewhere within the maze-like confines of his home, still he had not the first idea where to look for them. Nonetheless, he made quite an effort for perhaps ten minutes, before getting to his feet after peering under the bed in an unused guest room and realising that a truly comprehensive investigation might take all day.<p>

"Bother," he said to himself. "Well, after all, there is no need for it to be _my_ saw."

And so he took his coat from beside the front door and made his way down to the snug little hobbit hole where Holman lived. Holman himself was outside despite the rather chilly weather, working industriously in his vegetable garden (though what reason there might be to do such a thing in late October, Bilbo had no idea - he rather suspected Holman simply enjoyed working for its own sake). He looked up when Bilbo's shadow fell across him, and his face broke into a broad grin.

"Ah, now, Mr. Bilbo," he said. "I have not seen you in far too long. And I hear your Mr. Kili has been getting out and about? By hisself, by all accounts!"

He looked so pleased at this evidence of independence from Kili that Bilbo had not the heart to tell him how it had all come crashing down. Instead, he gave his best smile and resolved to be happy that such a sturdy, respectable hobbit was interested in Kili's progress at all.

"Indeed," he said, "though he has decided to stay indoors for the next little while, at least. But Holman, could I borrow a saw?"

"A saw?" Holman asked. "Why, certainly! But what are you doing up there, Mr. Bilbo? I wouldn't want you to do yourself an injury."

Bilbo, who of course had survived a quest, an elvish dungeon, riddling with a live dragon and a dreadful battle (among many other perils), felt somewhat put-out by the implication of Holman's words. But, he supposed, no matter how unrespectable he might have become, Holman would always see him as a gentlehobbit, and therefore assume he was incapable of doing anything for himself.

"It is not for me," he said. "It is for Fili."

Holman nodded - it seemed he was much less concerned about a dwarf handling such a dangerous tool than a hobbit such as Bilbo - and wiped his hands off on his breeches. "And what else might he be needing?" he asked. "Hammer? Nails? Chisel?"

"Er," Bilbo said. "Yes, yes, all of those, I suppose." In truth, he had not the first idea, but it was better to have something and not need it than need something and not have it, as his mother had always said (which perhaps might go a long way towards explaining just why Bag End was so very full of household items in the first place).

"Hm," said Holman. "Right you are, then. If you'll just give me a moment." And he disappeared into his hobbit hole, and reappeared a moment later carrying a large box which clanked rather as he moved.

"Thank you v-" started Bilbo, and then stopped, for Holman marched past him and up in the direction of Bag End. "Er," he said, hurrying to catch up, "I'm sure I can carry it myself."

"I don't doubt it, Mr. Bilbo," Holman said, "but I'm sure your Mr. Fili will be glad of a little help with his project. Many hands make light work, and all that."

It was clear from his face that he would not take no for an answer, and if Bilbo was honest with himself, Fili's remark about his own lack of skill in woodworking had led to a vision of collapsing shelves which he had been doing his very best to banish from his head, so he made no further protest but only accompanied Holman up the hill and in through the front door of Bag End. The two of them passed through the living room on the way to the kitchen, and Holman paused and nodded at Kili, who was still sunk in silent contemplation in his chair.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Kili," he said. "I hope you are well?"

Kili, who seemed a little startled by Holman's unexpected appearance, took a moment to answer, and seemed to be groping for the correct words, for he had not really progressed far beyond _hello_ in his greeting skills despite the many months he had been learning Common. "Well," he said finally - for he had something of a tendency to repeat the last words that had been spoken to him when he was nervous. "Yes." And then, with a worried glance at Bilbo, he added, "Hello."

Holman's face split into a broad smile. "Hello, indeed," he said, and then continued on his way to the kitchen, whistling cheerfully. Bilbo smiled at Kili as well and patted him on the shoulder to let him know that he had performed his duty admirably, and then followed Holman.

He found him standing in the pantry doorway peering in at Fili, who was still examining the shelves. "Good afternoon, Mr. Fili," he was saying. "Mr. Bilbo tells me you have need of some tools."

"Aye, I do, at that," Fili said, looking a little surprised but not at all put-out by Holman's presence. "A measuring tape first of all, I think." He pointed at the shelves. "Do you know much about shelves, Mr. Greenhand? I want to make an alcove."

"Well, now," Holman said, setting his tool-box down on the kitchen table and opening it up, "what kind of an alcove? For storing barrels, perhaps?"

"For a dwarf," Fili said, and then amended himself. "For an armchair with a dwarf in it."

Holman, kindly, steadfast hobbit that he was, responded to this with no more that a brief raise of his eyebrows. "Right you are," he said, advancing with the measuring tape in hand. "Well, then, let's see."

Bilbo, pleased to see his questionable abilities would not be required, poured Holman some tea (something which he had not the slightest doubt about his ability to do) and then returned to the living room to find Kili eyeing the kitchen door with a rather wary look. The sound of sawing had already begun to emanate from the pantry, and Kili turned to Bilbo with a frown.

"What they are do?" he said.

"_Doing_," Bilbo said, settling down opposite him. "Do you remember when we talked about -_ing_ words?"

Kili stared at him for a moment, and then shook his head. "No," he said. "I am not good remember hobbit-speech."

"You are not good _at remembering_-" started Bilbo, but Kili looked so despondent at this second correction that he stopped and patted his arm instead. "Well, never mind that for now," he said. "They are making some - improvements to the pantry." For he felt sure that Fili would want the new alcove to be a surprise for his brother, and did not want to spoil it.

Kili's mouth twisted slightly in a way that suggested he had not really understood Bilbo's response, but he did not ask for further clarification. "Pantry," he said instead, looking again at the door to the kitchen. "Pantry is room where food. It is this, yes?"

"Yes, quite right," Bilbo said. "_Pantry_ is the word for the room where we keep all the food." He was about to elucidate further on the fine differences between a pantry and a larder - not to mention a cellar or a buttery - when Kili spoke again.

"Fili say I like," he said. "He say I want go pantry."

"Yes, he did," Bilbo said, sitting up a little straighter, for it seemed to him that this had quickly become the kind of conversation that might lead to a breakthrough in Kili's state of mind.

Kili nodded. "He is right?" he asked.

"I don't know," Bilbo replied carefully. "Certainly you did go in there every time we played our game this morning. But that might be only because it was easier, because you had already been in there when we played yesterday." Privately, of course, he was quite convinced that Kili liked the pantry very much, but he wished above all for Kili to come to this conclusion on his own.

"Which it is?" asked Kili with a small frown. "Because it is easier?"

"I don't know, Kili," Bilbo said again, with as much patience as he could muster. "Which do you think it is? Do you feel good in the pantry? Do you want to go in there? Or do you only go in because it is easy?"

Kili stared at him for a long moment, and Bilbo waited and held his tongue, though not without difficulty, for he was on tenterhooks to hear Kili's answer. But when it came, it was not at all what Bilbo was hoping for: the little dwarf ducked his head suddenly and looked away, and when he spoke it was half-muffled by the hair that had suddenly fallen across his face.

"Because easy," he muttered. "No, I not like. Not want, not like."

Bilbo, naturally, felt rather deflated at this. "Oh," he said, and then tried to decide whether to prod Kili further - for he was quite sure that this was not the whole of it, especially given that Kili now seemed not to be able to look him in the eye - or to let the matter rest. But at that moment there was an especially loud clatter from the pantry, and Kili started rather violently. Bilbo, looking closely, saw that he was holding himself with great tension, and perhaps his hands were even trembling a little. This was quite enough to resolve him on a course of action, and he leapt to his feet.

"That's one question solved, anyway," he said with determined cheerfulness. "Now come along, it is far too long since we discussed the names of all your friends." And he took Kili by the arm and raised him from his chair, tugging him out of the room towards the guest bedroom, where the majority of his pictures were now once more pinned up around the walls. But before he left the room entirely, he glanced back at Kili, and saw that he was looking towards the kitchen door. And he knew then that the question was not solved.

Not at all.


	4. Chapter 4

Fili and Holman were at their alcove-making all of the rest of that day, and much of the next. Bilbo kept Kili away from the kitchen and the noise, and found him things to occupy himself with in the bedroom or outside. But towards mid-afternoon on the second day, Kili grew increasingly restless, until at last Bilbo frowned and sat down in front of him.

"What is the matter, my lad?" he asked. "Is there something you want?"

Kili hesitated, and Bilbo began to prepare himself for a long battle to discover what it was that was troubling his friend. But - to his surprise and satisfaction - such a battle never occurred. For after a moment, Kili glanced towards the bedroom door and spoke.

"We play game?" he asked.

"Certainly, we can play a game," Bilbo said, delighted by this request. "What game would you like to play?"

Kili stared at him, unblinking. "Not-" he said, and then shook his head and looked away. "I not mean this," he said.

"Oh," Bilbo said, finding himself rather disappointed. "Well, then, I'm afraid I did not understand you."

"No," Kili muttered, and then seemed to pull himself together. "I ask - we play - _if_ we play today game. Game we played before."

"You want to know if we _will_ play that game today," Bilbo said. "_Will_, remember?"

"Will," Kili repeated. "We will play today game? Game of before?"

"Hm," Bilbo said, listening carefully and hearing the faint sounds of hammering still drifting from the direction of the kitchen. "Well, no, I think not today."

Kili nodded slowly. "We not play again?" he said. "We - we not will play again?"

This question, of course, immediately sparked a suspicion in Bilbo that the game was important in some way to Kili. However, he could not for the life of him tell from Kili's face whether the little dwarf was hoping for a _yes_ or a _no_, and after his mistake with the pantry the day before, he did not wish to assume too much. It was all quite vexing, to be sure!

"Why do you ask?" he said at last, deciding that more information was required before he could properly answer the question.

Kili frowned a little. "We play yesterday," he said. "Play also - yesterday yesterday."

"The day before yesterday," Bilbo supplied. "Yes, we have played two days in a row, now."

"Yes, two days," Kili said. "I did think - did think we play. Did think you like play."

Ah! Now there was the tiny opening into Kili's murky thought processes that Bilbo had been hoping for. It seemed to him that Kili would not have suggested that Bilbo liked to play unless he wanted to play himself. For a moment, he considered trying to lead Kili towards expressing his own desire, but then he soundly rejected the idea - for, although he was not always the wisest of hobbits, nonetheless he had learned something from the disaster that had been his last attempt to push Kili too quickly.

"Well," he said, "you are right, of course, I do enjoy that game. Perhaps we will play it tomorrow. Or even this afternoon, if your brother has finished with his project."

At this mention of Fili's renovations, Kili seemed to withdraw a little, a circumstance which naturally troubled Bilbo's mind. He had considered telling Fili what Kili had said about not liking the pantry, but decided against it for a number of reasons. First was that he still believed that there was more to Kili's feelings than his short statement had revealed. Second was that he felt that Fili had become a little overwrought in the past few days, and it was good for him to have some way to focus his energies. And third - and perhaps most important - was that if he told him and Fili abandoned the project, Bilbo would find himself with a pantry containing half an alcove, and half an alcove was no use to anyone. And so he had held his tongue, and hoped that there would be no serious consequences to his silence. Now, though, seeing Kili's reaction to the mention of what Fili was doing, he felt an unpleasant foreboding in his heart.

And as it happened, it was at that moment that the hammering stopped.

Kili, ever aware of his surroundings, sat up straighter, glancing again towards the bedroom door, but saying nothing. Bilbo waited a little while, but once it became clear that this was not merely a brief respite, but possibly even a true and final cessation, he took Kili's arm.

"At least we can go back to the living room," he said.

When they got there, though, Kili paused in the doorway, eyeing the room with a doubtful expression.

"Hobbit," he said, "where I should sit? I should sit on floor?"

"Not at all!" Bilbo said. "You should sit where you always sit, of course." But when he turned to point at Kili's chair, he saw that it had disappeared. He did not have long to ponder this, however, for a moment later, Fili stepped through the door, looking rather filthy and with sawdust in his beard.

"There you are," he said with a smile. "I have something to show you, my brother."

He took Kili's arm and led him towards the kitchen. Bilbo felt a nervous fluttering in his chest, and hurried to catch up with them, tugging on Fili's sleeve.

"Fili, perhaps this can wait," he said.

Fili glanced at him in confusion. "Wait?" he said. "Why would it need to wait?"

And Bilbo, try as he might, could invent no reason - or at least, not in the time it took to walk from the living-room to the kitchen. He was still thinking franticly when Fili flung open the pantry door and turned to his brother with a broad grin.

"Do you see?" he asked.

Kili stood in the doorway, staring in. Bilbo peered around him and saw that the alcove showed little evidence of its hasty construction. It was snug and inviting, the edges of the shelves sanded carefully smooth, and Kili's armchair set neatly within the oval space. Fili had placed a lamp on one of the shelves a little above head-height for a dwarf, and this shed a pleasant, warm glow over the shelves of jars and bottles and assorted foodstuffs, making them seem almost as something from a painting rather than the prosaic items they truly were. Why, it almost made Bilbo wish to curl up in the pantry himself!

Kili, however, did not go and sit in the chair, but only looked at his brother with a troubled expression.

"It is chair where I sit," he said.

"Yes," Fili replied. "It is your chair."

Kili nodded. "I should sit here?" he asked.

"Yes," said Fili, at the same time as Bilbo said "Only if you want to." Kili's troubled frown deepened, and he glanced anxiously from one to the other. Fili, too, turned to frown at Bilbo, and then after a moment turned back to his brother.

"You should sit," he said. "I made it so you could sit."

Kili looked again at Bilbo, and Bilbo, who was both concerned not to further upset the little dwarf and perhaps a trifle wary of Fili's temper, nodded his head. "Why don't you sit down for a little while?" he said.

Bilbo saw immediately that this had been the right thing to say, for there was a great easing of tension in Kili, and he went without hesitation to sit in the armchair. But even so, he did not look quite at ease, and he eyed Fili and Bilbo cautiously even as he settled himself.

"I should always sit here now?" he asked. "No more sit with you?"

"Goodness me, no," Bilbo said. "Why should you think that? Your brother and I would miss you terribly if you were to spend the rest of your life in the pantry!"

Kili's mouth twitched. "Chair is here," he said.

"We will get you another chair, Kili," Fili said. "Bilbo is right. We would miss you if you were always in here." He smiled, leaning down to give his brother a swift hug. "I would miss you," he said.

At this, Kili seemed at last to let go of the nervousness he had displayed ever since Fili started working on his alcove the day before. He sat back in his chair and gazed around at the shelves, then nodded at Fili.

"I understand," he said.

"Well, we shall leave you to your alcove," Bilbo said, quite relieved that Kili seemed so unperturbed by his odd change of scenery. "Oh, but there is one more thing." He hurried off to the airing cupboard, and came back a moment later with his arms full of blankets, which he dropped on Kili's lap. "A fire in here would not be good for the food," he said, "and besides, there is no fireplace. But I do not want you catching cold, master dwarf, so you must wrap up warm."

Kili obediently wrapped himself in a blanket, already seeming rather lost in his contemplation of a great ham that hung from the ceiling. Bilbo found himself smiling broadly, and he led Fili back into the kitchen. "Well, my friend" he said, patting Fili on the shoulder, "I must admit I had my doubts, but it seems your handiwork was just the thing."

Fili, though, did not seem entirely satisfied. "I thought he would be - more pleased," he said, frowning at the kitchen door and scratching at his beard, sending crumbs of sawdust spiralling to the floor.

"I think he is pleased," Bilbo said. Certainly, Kili seemed a great deal more pleased than Bilbo had expected, but he did not feel that now was the time to reveal to Fili what Kili had said about not liking the pantry. "But he is Kili. You can hardly expect him to dance a jig."

"No," Fili said, still staring at the door. He did not seem really to be listening to Bilbo, and so Bilbo gave up talking to him and went about his business, happy at least that no major disaster had occurred. Indeed, everything had been going remarkably smoothly for some time, and so of course Bilbo should have known that something less pleasant would soon occur. But he did not know, and in any case, the form that it took, when it came, was rather unexpected.

It was perhaps an hour after Kili had been installed in the pantry, and past time for afternoon tea, when Fili made as if to get to his feet.

"He has been in there long enough, I think," he said. "I will fetch him."

"Hm," Bilbo replied. "But do you not think that you might ask him whether he wants to come out or not?"

Fili stared at him a moment, then settled back into his chair. "No," he said, looking very serious. "I do not think I will."

Bilbo, rather surprised by the intensity of Fili's gaze, found himself squirming a little. "Oh, well," he stuttered, "but don't you think-"

"I do not," Fili said. There was no sharpness in his tone, but there was a finality there that made it clear that he would brook no argument. "He is not ready, Bilbo. I am surprised you still have not understood this."

Bilbo opened his mouth, and then closed it again, feeling suddenly rather like he was talking to Thorin - or rather, perhaps more like he was talking to Dis, for there was nothing of Thorin's impatience about Fili's expression or tone, but the odd weight that his words seemed to carry reminded Bilbo very much of his mother. And, just as when he talked to Dis, he found himself taking great care over the words he chose, and feeling very much like a silly little hobbit.

"I do understand, of course," he said finally. "I know as well as you that he does not want to make choices for himself. But if we simply let him go on, he will never take that step by himself. We must push him, Fili, or he will never learn."

Fili sat back in his chair. There had been times - very recent times, in fact, perhaps only the day before - when Bilbo had worried that his friend was far too emotional, that having his brother returned to him in the state he was in had created in him a great fragility that lay just beneath the surface of his smiling, confident exterior. But at this moment, Bilbo could see nothing of these cracks. All he saw was a determination, and a certainty that rather took his breath away.

"You are often right, my friend," Fili said. "Far more often than I. But you are not right now. We pushed him before, and he came back cowering at shadows. I would not see that again, even if it means it takes him a dozen years to learn to think for himself." Bilbo opened his mouth to protest this, but Fili raised a hand. "But I do not think it will be so," he said. "No-one pushes Kili as hard as he pushes himself. It was so before the orcs, and it is so now. He is much changed, it is true. But he is still my brother."

Bilbo frowned. "He has no reason to push himself," he said. "He does not want to make his own choices. He is quite happy letting us make them all for him."

Fili shook his head. "I know you believe this," he said, "but I disagree. I know I have lost my temper with you a few times of late, and I am sorry for that, for I know you are only trying your best. But I will not ask Kili what he wants, and you will not, either."

"Oh, will I not?" Bilbo asked, beginning to feel a little nettled by being pushed about in this manner. But Fili only fixed him with his serious gaze.

"You will not," he said. "You are his dear friend. But I am his brother, and his care rests with me."

Well, Bilbo fairly spluttered at this, for of course there were many times recently when he had found himself burdened with Kili's care, and Fili's, too, for that matter. "Your mother entrusted him to me," he managed at last - though he did not mention that Dis had in fact entrusted both her sons to him, for it seemed almost laughable that he might claim any kind of charge over Fili, for all that he looked after him in his darker moods.

"She did," Fili said with a small smile. "But that was six months ago or less. She entrusted him to me the day he was born, and I have never given that trust up, though I have not always fulfilled it as I would have liked. He is my brother, Bilbo, and I have listened to your advice and followed it many times, but this time I will not." He rose to his feet, and laid a heavy hand on Bilbo's shoulder. "I will not ask him if he wants to leave," he said. "I will tell him. It is what he needs to make him feel safe."

And this last, of course, Bilbo could not deny. For a moment, he tried to formulate a thought about there being things that were more important than feeling safe. But after careful consideration, he realised that, though this is true for many, if not most, it was perhaps not true for Kili, not then and there. And in any case, Fili had already left the room, and Bilbo could hear his low voice murmuring in the pantry. He frowned after him, and tried to disentangle his feelings, for he felt rather hurt, and a little angry, and oddly guilty, and all of these things were rather a lot for one small hobbit who had been expecting nothing of the sort. But then Fili returned with Kili in tow, and Bilbo made a determined effort to seem just as cheerful and carefree as always. He sat down opposite Kili and smiled at him, though he felt not quite so at ease as he usually did, for he was very aware of Fili at Kili's elbow.

"Did you enjoy your new alcove?" he asked.

Kili stared at him. "New-?" he said.

"Alcove," Bilbo said. "It is the name for the space you were sitting in in the pantry. Your brother made it for you."

"Alcoh," Kili said, and glanced at Fili. "What it is for?"

"It is for you to sit in, my brother," Fili said. "So that you have somewhere to sit when you are in the pantry."

"It was made especially for you," Bilbo said. "Do you know what that means?"

Kili thought for a moment. "It means - I should sit in pantry? But - but not always." He glanced again at Fili. "Fili say not always. Because miss."

"Well, that is not quite what it means," Bilbo said. "It means that you may go to the pantry whenever you want to. You have your own chair in there, you see? It means you can go whenever you feel like you might want to look at the food. You do not have to ask first. You can just go."

"Bilbo," Fili said, with a warning frown.

"Yes, master dwarf?" Bilbo said, in the most enquiring and innocent of tones. Perhaps Fili was ultimately Kili's guardian in a way that Bilbo could never hope to be - and did not want to be, for of course he had no interest in trying to replace Kili's family - but that did not mean Bilbo would simply do whatever he was told.

"We have talked about this," Fili said.

"We have, indeed," Bilbo replied, smiling at Kili and patting his knee. But Kili frowned and glanced warily at his brother.

"You are angry?" he said.

Fili stared at Bilbo just a moment longer, then turned to Kili with a soft smile. "I am not angry, my brother," he said. "Not angry in the least."

Kili watched him for a short time, as if trying to decide if he was telling the truth. But Fili only sat and smiled and allowed himself to be watched, and at last, Kili turned back to Bilbo.

"Alcoh," he said.

"_Alcove_," said Bilbo, making sure to speak clearly. "You can go there whenever you want. That is what it means, that your chair is there. Do you understand?"

Kili nodded, though he seemed rather hesitant. "Yes," he said. "Understand."

"Good," said Bilbo. "Well, then, I think it is time for tea." And he rose to his feet and made his way to the kitchen. But he did not go alone: Fili followed him there, and Bilbo, turning, braced himself for harsh words. And indeed, it seemed at first that he would receive them, for Fili was scowling at him fiercely, looking this time not at all like Dis, but only like Thorin. But a moment later, the scowl dissolved, and Fili only sighed.

"He will not go," he said, his voice low so that Kili would not hear. "He will not choose to go by himself."

"Well, there can certainly be no harm in telling him that he may," Bilbo said. This, of course, was not necessarily true, for Bilbo had learned by bitter experience that when it came to Kili, there were many things that could cause harm when it was least expected. But this, he felt sure, was not one of them - for after all, he had not told Kili he _had_ to choose whether or not to go to the pantry, only that he could if he wanted to.

It seemed for a moment that Fili was about to say something else - but whatever it was, he closed his mouth around it and turned away, picking up the tray that Bilbo had been loading with tea and cake. Bilbo sighed and wondered when he had gone from feeling quite cheerful and content in his snug hobbit hole with his two beloved friends, to feeling rather ill at ease and obscurely guilty. But after a moment's feeling sorry for himself, he chided himself for a foolish hobbit and followed Fili back to the living room. After all, he had nothing to feel guilty about.

* * *

><p>In the event, Fili was quite right: Kili did not take up the opportunity to go and sit in the pantry of his own accord, not that day, nor the next, either. This came as no great surprise, of course, but even so, Bilbo found himself oddly disappointed. He had hoped - oh, it had been a foolish hope, but a hope nonetheless - that, with the way so clear of obstacles, and the object so greatly desired, Kili might have found it a little easier than before to choose something just for himself. After all, he was happy enough to look at his pictures without so much as a by your leave. Perhaps, though, the game they had played had led Bilbo believing that the pantry was more important to Kili than it actually was - after all, he had had to go to one room or another, and indeed, he had even declared that he did not care for it when Bilbo had asked him outright. But Bilbo could not help but remember the way he had stared and stared at the food, the way he had even seemed dazed after too long spent among the shelves, and wonder that this could be a result of indifference or dislike.<p>

On the second day after the alcove was finished, Bilbo had his answer. Shortly after elevenses, Kili sat up in his chair and frowned a little.

"Hobbit," he said, "we play - we will play game?"

"Game?" Bilbo asked. "Would you like to play the game?"

Kili's frown deepened. "You said - you said before yesterday play, but we not play. We will not play again?"

"I did say that, didn't I?" Bilbo said. "Well, it is only because I forgot! Certainly we can play again. In fact, we shall play right now!" And he looked at Fili, who nodded and smiled.

"I should be very glad to play," he said.

"Splendid," Bilbo said. "Well, now, why don't you go first, Kili, since it was your idea?"

This suggestion did not have quite the effect Bilbo was hoping for, for Kili looked suddenly quite distressed and ducked his head, letting his hair fall across his face.

"It not my idea," he muttered. "Not my. Hobbit idea. I ask only, only ask."

"Oh, of course," Bilbo said hastily, patting Kili's arm. "Of course it was not your idea. I only mean to say it was you that reminded me, since I had already said we would play. And you should go first, because it was you that reminded me."

Kili, after a moment or two of hesitation, came cautiously out from behind his hair. "I go?" he said.

"Yes," Bilbo replied. "You should go."

And so Kili went, and of course Bilbo did not need his mirror to see where he chose to go. But nonetheless he frowned after him, for he was concerned by how unhappy Kili had been with the attribution of an idea to him. After all, he had had ideas before - it had been his idea to pretend to be a _snaga_ in Lake-Town, more than a year ago now! - and had never seemed overly perturbed. This odd reluctance on Kili's part to claim any kind of thought or will at all caused an uneasiness deep in Bilbo's stomach, an uneasiness that he rather thought might have been growing for some time, but had only now made itself known.

"Shall we leave him to the pantry?" Fili asked, breaking into Bilbo's worried thoughts.

"What? Oh, yes, I suppose we should," Bilbo said.

And so they did.

* * *

><p>Bilbo left Kili in the pantry for almost an hour before deciding it was time to go and fetch him. Fili had gone down into the village to buy some fresh eggs, and so Bilbo found himself making for the pantry alone. A thought crept into his mind that perhaps he might do just as Fili refused to do, and ask Kili if he was ready to leave or not - and surely, if Kili could not reply then he could make the decision for him, but if he could, well, would that not be quite the triumph for Bilbo? But when he stepped in through the pantry door and observed his friend, wrapped up in his blanket and tucked into the armchair, he remembered of a sudden how Kili had grown unhappy at the very suggestion that an idea might be attributed to him, and he decided that perhaps it was Fili who had the right of it, after all.<p>

"Hello there, my lad," he said with a smile, touching Kili's shoulder to attract his attention (for he seemed quite distracted by an admittedly impressive marrow). "Time to go back to the living room."

Kili turned and blinked at him. "Hobbit," he said, and then frowned. "You are long time guess."

"Oh," Bilbo said, "well, we guessed a lot of other rooms first, but you weren't in any of them. And that means that you win this round, I think!"

Kili's frown deepened at this, though he came easily enough to his feet when Bilbo tugged on his arm, and followed Bilbo out of the pantry without the least hesitation. "We play again?" he asked, and then paused in the doorway to the living room, glancing around. "Fili already go room?"

"Your brother has gone out for a little while," Bilbo said. "We will have to play again some other time. Why don't you sit down and look at your pictures?"

Kili sank obediently into his chair and took up the pictures, but he did not look at them, but rather stared at Bilbo intently.

"Was there something else you wanted to ask?" Bilbo said.

Kili stared a moment longer, then looked away. "No ask," he mumbled.

"Hm," said Bilbo. But it seemed, indeed, that Kili had nothing to ask, and now he had redirected his fierce concentration to his pictures, so Bilbo let him be.

* * *

><p>If Bilbo Baggins had been asked to describe what life in his cosy hobbit hole was like in the next few days, he would certainly have used the word <em>quiet<em>. The three inhabitants of Bag End went about their business, and spent much of their time gathered in the living room around the fire, for the weather had taken something of a chilly turn as October gave way to November. Cosy it was indeed, and snug, and there was plenty of food, and plenty of warmth, and it was everything a once-respectable hobbit like our Mr. Baggins could have wished for. But above all, it was _quiet_.

Everything a hobbit could wish for perhaps, and yet, something was amiss, and for all the cosiness and warm fire, Bilbo felt quite ill at ease. Kili had grown silent indeed, and spent a great deal of his time staring at nothing, but when Bilbo asked him if something was the matter, he merely mumbled into his hair and refused to meet Bilbo's gaze. At first, Bilbo thought this was merely one of his shy moods, which, though not quite as frequent as they had once been, still made regular appearances, with no apparent explanation. But as one day passed into the next, and Kili said scarcely a word to Bilbo and precious little more to Fili, the unease in Bilbo's heart began to grow, and to gnaw at him a little, and to tinge all the good cheer and comfort of the hobbit hole with a sort of nagging unpleasantness. Kili did not even ask to play the game any more, and although at last Bilbo gave up waiting and announced that they would play himself, Kili seemed quite indifferent to it, and even a little reluctant, if truth be told, so that they gave it up very soon after they began, and did not play again.

Perhaps it was Kili whose behaviour was causing the most disquiet in Bilbo's heart, but it was Fili - as so often - who brought the matter to a head. He, it seemed, had been afflicted much as Bilbo had by Kili's silence, and had gone from general good cheer to unsmiling seriousness, and from there to worried frowns interspersed with bouts of crossness. At last, on the day after their attempt to play Kili's game, Fili took Bilbo aside, dragging him into the kitchen and closing the door.

"Have you done something to make my brother angry with you?" he asked, before Bilbo even had the chance to sit down at the table.

"Angry?" Bilbo asked, astonished. "Do you think he is angry with me?"

Fili scowled, glancing at the door. "Well, upset, then," he said. "He is certainly not himself. What have you said to him?"

"Why should you think I have said anything at all?" Bilbo snapped, feeling quite hard done by - and not for the first time that week, for he had not forgotten Fili's assertion of his authority over Kili, although he had tried to accept it. "He barely speaks to me, so I can hardly have had the chance to say something to upset him!"

"Well, I have not said anything," Fili said, "and so it must have been you. Think, Bilbo. You must have done something."

"Oh, you dwarves are quite impossible!" Bilbo cried. "First I am responsible for Kili's wellbeing, then I am told I cannot make decisions regarding him, and now despite that it must be my fault whenever he is miserable! As if your brother were not capable of flinging himself into the darkest of moods without anyone's help at all."

Fili seemed quite surprised by this outburst, but he did not shout back, only narrowed his eyes a little. "You know as well as I that he is rarely so unhappy without good cause," he said.

"Do I, indeed?" Bilbo asked. "And do you not think that the shadows he has in his mind from all those years of horror are good cause enough? No, apparently it takes a hobbit to do what orcs cannot."

Fili's jaw grew tight, then, and Bilbo clamped his teeth down on what he had been going to say next, which would no doubt have been just as ill-tempered - and ill-considered - and drew in a deep breath. "I have not done anything," he said, rather stiffly. "I have not done anything, and I have not said anything, and I would thank you not to assume that everything is always my fault. But if you would like, I will talk to Kili, so that we may be sure."

Fili watched him for a long moment, then nodded.

"We will ask him," he said. "If you can manage to keep a rein on your temper."

This, of course, made Bilbo's temper swell up all the more, but he swallowed it down and nodded back.

"Well, then," he said, and stalked into the living room. Once there, he paused to pull himself together - for perhaps Fili was behaving unfairly, but it was true enough that it would not do to ask Kili any difficult questions while he was still feeling angry and snappish. Once he was sure that he would be able to prevent any left-over annoyance from presenting itself in his voice, he sat opposite Kili and reached over to pat his knee.

"Now, then, my lad," he said. "What is this all about? Have I done something to make you angry?"

Kili lifted his head and frowned at him, then looked quickly away, just as he had been doing for the last few days. "I not understand," he mumbled.

"I am asking why you are so gloomy and quiet," Bilbo said, making sure to speak clear. "Are you angry with me?"

Now, Bilbo only asked this question to show Fili that it was not the case, and he certainly did not expect the reaction it produced, or the events that followed. Perhaps, if he had known, he would not have said it at all. And then again, perhaps it was exactly the right thing to say. At any rate, say it he did, and then Kili did indeed look him in the face, with an expression of such incredulity that it was almost comical.

"Angry you?" he said. "No - no, I not - I can not angry you. How I be angry you? Can not angry you."

Having said this, he ducked his head sharply and clasped his hands around his knees, as if trying to prevent them from doing something else. Bilbo, taken aback by this vehement outburst, glanced at Fili, only to see he was looking just as perplexed. And now there was quite the dilemma, for it was not clear to Bilbo whether the best thing would be to continue his line of questioning and dig out the cause of Kili's withdrawal, or to try to help him understand that it was perfectly permitted for him to be angry with anyone he chose. But it seemed to Bilbo that this vigorous denial of even the capability for anger had rather too much in common with Kili's refusal of the possibility of having ideas a few days before, and this was surely a more pressing problem than a passing dark mood. And so he settled himself more comfortably in his chair and reached out to touch Kili's arm.

"You certainly can be angry with me, if I have done something to warrant it," he said. "You can be angry with anyone - with me, or with Fili, or with your uncle - perhaps most especially with your uncle, since he is so very good at occasioning it." He paused, but Kili did not lift his head or show any sign that he had heard what Bilbo had said. "Did you understand me, lad?" Bilbo asked. "You can be angry with whoever has done something to deserve it."

Kili did say something then, but he kept his head down and spoke so quietly that all Bilbo heard was a low muttering. Sighing, Bilbo reached out and took Kili's chin with his fingers, lifting it until their eyes were of a level. Even then, though, Kili did not look at him, but kept his eyes on the floor.

"What did you say?" Bilbo asked. "I cannot hear you when you have all that hair over your face."

"You not want hear," Kili muttered, determinedly looking at his knees.

"I most certainly do," Bilbo replied. "Come, now, tell me what it is."

Kili hesitated, then seemed to try to duck his head again, although the movement was prevented by Bilbo's firm grasp on his chin. "_Snaga_ can not be angry master," he said.

These words, though spoken in a voice so quiet it was barely audible, struck Bilbo like a blow. He gaped at Kili, then turned to Fili for assistance, only to find that his own horror and revulsion were mirrored on his friend's face. Bilbo turned back, seizing Kili by the arm, which of course meant letting go of his chin. The moment he did this, Kili's head dropped, and he curled rapidly into himself, and surely would have drawn his legs up in front of him if it had not meant pushing Bilbo out of the way.

"But you are not a _snaga_," Bilbo said, shaking Kili's arm a little. "Kili, you know this. You know it. You are not a _snaga_, and I am certainly not - I am not -" And here the words turned to ash on his tongue, for he had never, not once, considered that Kili might think of him as a master, him, Bilbo Baggins, a silly little hobbit who could no more be master to a slave than he could grow wings and fly away. But now to hear Kili speak this way, after everything, after all these months- No, he could not even countenance it. "Kili," he said again. "Kili, you know this."

Kili did not respond to this plea, remaining curled over and withdrawn. Fili, after an alarmed glance at Bilbo, took hold of his brother's other arm, and seemed as though he wished to put his arm around him, though he did not do so. "You are not a _snaga_," he said. "You are not a _snaga_, my brother. Please."

It was this last word, or perhaps the odd, high note in Fili's voice when he said it, that finally brought forth a response from Kili. He glanced up, first at Fili, then at Bilbo, and shook his head.

"I not know what you want," he said. "I not know."

"What do you mean?" Bilbo asked.

For a moment, he thought that Kili would refuse to answer, but at last the little dwarf lifted his head a little, though he still seemed most uneasy, and would only look at Bilbo for a short time before dropping his eyes.

"You say want I choose," he said. "You say this. I should choose. It is not _snaga_. _Snaga_ not choose. But you say want. Want I not _snaga_. You say this."

"I said that, indeed," Bilbo said. "I have never wanted you to be a _snaga_. You know that." He looked at Fili, hoping for support, but Fili was only staring at his brother, and was no use at all.

"You say - say," Kili said, and then seemed to run out of words. He shook his head. "You ask me, I want go pantry. I say - say no. Not like, not want. But you want I go. You say I go."

"Oh," Bilbo said. "Oh, well, you see, I thought - your brother and I thought - that maybe you would enjoy it in there. We only wanted you to go because we thought you would enjoy it, you see?" But even as he said it, it became obvious to him that it did not really matter whether Kili had been telling the whole truth when he said he did not want to go into the pantry - the fact was that he had expressed a preference, and Bilbo had ignored it, despite all his urging for Kili to make his own choice. A great sense of frustration and guilt rose up in Bilbo then, for of course he had only been doing his best to make his friend happy, and yet it seemed he had caused more problems than he had solved.

But there was more to come. Kili was shaking his head again. "You say choose," he said. "You say choose, but I choose, and it is wrong. I choose wrong. I not understand."

Bilbo opened his mouth to try again to explain, but it seemed that Kili had not finished. "You - you find me, in pantry," he said. "You are long time, long time find. You say it is - long time guess, guess wrong room first. But it is not this. Know it is not this. Always go same room, always, always. It is not long time guess. You know room. Should know. But you say long time guess. And - and say play game, but it is not game. Fili not play. It is not game. You say me wrong. Say me not true. You want I choose, but say me not true. How I can choose, how I can be not _snaga_, you not say me true?"

"Well, I-" Bilbo spluttered, "yes, it is true that - I certainly did not - I only said that to you because I thought you were enjoying being in the pantry, my lad. I did not mean to mislead you." He was beginning to feel rather like he had stepped into a terrible trap, and he could see no way to defend himself, although for the life of him he could not quite understand what he had done wrong, either. And what was worse, Fili was beginning to scowl, and although he was still staring at his brother, Bilbo knew that the scowl was meant for someone else entirely.

"It is not enjoy, not enjoy," Kili said. "It is you say I choose. I should choose. But you not - not let me choose. I not understand, hobbit. You want I _snaga_, you want I not _snaga_?"

Bilbo found his mouth dropping open for the second time that day. This time, he could find no words at all, and Kili stared at him anxiously.

"You not angry," he said. "I only ask, only want know. You not angry. You want _snaga_, I can _snaga_. I do this. You want, I do. Only say me. You want I _snaga_?"

On hearing this - this dreadful offer of willing enslavement, this offer that went against everything that Bilbo had worked so hard to teach Kili for so many months - all the unease and frustration and sense of being unfairly treated that Bilbo had been suffering for the past few days seem to churn together in Bilbo's gut to produce a great maelstrom of unpleasant emotions. Unfortunately, as is so often the case when strong negative feelings are thus mixed, the first thing that bubbled to the surface was anger.

"Of course I do not want you to be a _snaga_!" he cried, not caring to hide the sharpness in his tone. "You are being very unfair, very unfair indeed. I have never wanted that, as you know very well, for I have told you and told you and told you again, until I am blue in the face and there is no breath left in my body! Why, if a few little white lies is all it takes after everything for you to think that way, then perhaps this is all hopeless and you will never learn not to be a _snaga_ after all!"

As soon as these last words had left Bilbo's mouth, he wished to call them back. But what is once spoken is spoken forever, and he had little time for regret, in the event, for Fili shot to his feet, seizing Bilbo by the arm and hauling him out of his chair.

"Out," he growled, shoving Bilbo towards the kitchen. But Bilbo had had quite enough of being pushed around by Fili, and he was still hurt and angry and, somewhere beneath it all, feeling very guilty indeed, and he stood his ground and folded his arms.

"This is my hobbit hole, master dwarf," he said. "I am not going anywhere."

Fili loomed over him, mouth set in a furious line. But Bilbo had stared down Thorin Oakenshield, and Fili, full of rage though he might be, was no match for his uncle. He stood firm, and after a moment, Fili turned sharply away.

"Then we will leave," he said, grabbing Kili's arm and pulling him to his feet. Bilbo opened his mouth to tell him not to be so ridiculous, but Fili was already halfway across the room, and Bilbo caught a glimpse of Kili's panicked face as he looked back before the door slammed behind them. A moment later, the front door opened and closed, and then there was silence.

Bilbo stared at the space where his friends had been not a moment before and tried to understand what on earth had happened that they were now gone. A moment later, filled with apprehension, he ran to the front door and threw it open, meaning to call them back. But the hillside was empty. Not a breath of wind stirred the chilly air, and no-one walked abroad, neither dwarves nor hobbits.

They were gone.


End file.
